Rural doctor plan gets boost
Students to train in upcountry hospitals
Training in rural hospitals should be included in the curriculum for all medical students under the rural doctors programme, to help achieve the primary care cluster (PCC) healthcare policy, Public Health Minister Piyasakol Sakonsatayadhorn says.
Dr Piyasakol said training in rural areas should be included in the course so doctors are ready to work there.
Speaking at the ministry yesterday, the minister voiced concern over the declining number of doctors working upcountry. Longer training periods in provincial hospitals would prepare them to work with people in remote areas, he added.
Since 1995, the ministry has run a medical education programme called the Collaborative Project to Increase Production of Rural Doctors (CPIRD), in addition to medical education provided by the Ministry of Education.
CPIRD students are trained at 37 medical education centres under the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) nationwide. The six-year course is divided into two halves: the first comprises pre-clinical and the second clinical studies where students work at hospitals, mostly located in cities. The CPIRD’s main objective is to train doctors to work in rural areas.
However, CPIRD director Rajin Arora said some doctors quit after working in remote areas as most have grown up in cities and it is difficult for them to get used to the new environment.
Dr Rajin suggested the second half of the studies should be modified to prepare students to work in rural hospitals after they graduate, so they can get accustomed to upcountry life and gain a better understanding of patients there right from the start.
The goal of increasing the number of doctors in upcountry areas is also in line with the MoPH plan to reduce inequalities in medical access under its planned PCC scheme.
In addition to having physicians working in rural hospitals, the MoPH also aims to boost the number of physicians specialising in family medicine in response to PCC policy.
By 2020, the plan is for each team of doctors to look after 10,000 families.
The MoPH expects to have about 6,500 PCC teams.
A PCC team should include a family physician, dentist, nurses, dental nurses, a pharmacist, a public health officer, a traditional Thai medicine physician, and a physiotherapist.
Family physicians should be able to diagnose and cure many basic diseases, and provide antenatal care, said Dr Rajin. With such doctors, rural folk would not have to travel to big hospitals in town, he added.
The hospitals where CPIRD students are prioritised to train are those that have family medicine professors so they will be inspired to continue their careers as family physicians.
Public Health Ministry permanent secretary Sopon Mekthon said the shortage of physicians in rural areas may also have something to do with dignity, quality of life and compensation, and the ministry will try to provide more incentives.