Collaborative Project to Increase Production of Rural Doctors to Tackle Physician Shortage Problem of Ministry of Public Health - โครงการผลิตแพทย์เพื่อชาวชนบทกับการแก้ไขปัญหาความขาดแคลนแพทย์ของกระทรวงสาธารณสุข
Abstract
The Collaborative Project to Increase Production of Rural Doctors emerged in 1994 as a strategic management to tackle physician shortage problem of the Ministry of Public Health. This project was aimed at increasing supply of doctors as a rural medical workforce.
The aim of this descriptive study was to determine the positive impact of this project on the physician shortage problem. Data were retrospectively collected from the profiles of medical students recruited during the academic year 1995-2006 and graduates during the academic year 2000-2007.
The results reveal that the project could recruit 2,982 medical students, during the academic year 1995-2006 (99.4% of its goal), who studied clinical years (year 4-6) at the medical education centers of the Ministry of Public Health with an admirable academic achievement. In all, 94.04 percent were graduated within 6 years with the drop out rate of only 3.56 percent. All of the graduates were sent back to their native provinces while 73.8 percent of the graduates still remained in their hometown placement after the three compulsory years of contract. The allocated number of compulsory contracted doctors to the Ministry of Public Health increased by 16.8 percent during the year 2001-2008 indicated a positive impact of this project.
In conclusion, the Collaborative Project to Increase Production of Rural Doctors was implemented with the hopeful sign of success and to be a good strategic management to cope with physician shortage problem of the Ministry of Public Health. Key contributing factors to the success are the strategies of rural recruitment of students, community-based medical education and hometown placement after graduation.
Key words: physician shortage, community based medical education, tackle physician shortage problem
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