Rural communities around the world face chronic shortages of medical, nursing, and allied health professionals that contribute to serious inequalities between urban and rural residents. Three concepts have been identified as relevant for health workforce recruitment and retention: sense of place, place attachment, and belonging-in-place. However, there is limited information regarding operationalisation of these concepts within health workforce studies. This paper presents findings from a scoping review investigating empirical application of these concepts across a range of disciplines. Findings identify various strategies for empirical application of two of these three concepts to health workforce research and highlight the value of particular approaches for studies of rural health workforce retention. The paper concludes with several recommendations for future research.