Attracting doctors and medical students to rural Vietnam: insights from a Discrete Choice Experiment
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Date
2010-12Author
Vujicic, Marko
Alfano, Marco
Shengalia, Bakhuti
Witter, Sophie
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Vujicic, M., Alfano, M., Shengalia, B. & Witter, S. (2010) Attracting doctors and medical students to rural Vietnam: insights from a Discrete Choice Experiment, , , no. 26, , Washington DC
Abstract
Persuading medical doctors to work in rural areas is one of the main challenges
facing health policy makers, in both developing and developed countries. Discrete choice
experiments (DCEs) have increasingly been used to analyze the preferences of health
workers, and how they would respond to alternative incentives associated with working
in a rural location. Previous DCE studies focusing on the rural recruitment and retention
problem have sampled either in-service health workers or students in the final year of
their training program. This study is the first to sample both of these groups in the same
setting. We carry out a DCE to compare how doctors and final-year medical students in
Vietnam value six job attributes, and use the results to simulate the impact of alternative
incentive packages on recruitment in rural areas. Results show significant differences
between the two groups. The location of workplace (rural or urban) was by far the most
important attribute for doctors; for medical students it was long-term education. More
surprising, however, was the magnitude of the differences: there were fivefold
differences in willingness-to-pay estimates for some job attributes. These differences
strongly suggest that policy makers in Vietnam should consider moving away from the
current uniform approach to rectifying rural shortages and tailor separate incentive
packages to students and doctors. Our results also suggest that future DCE studies should
carefully consider the choice of sample if results are to be used for policy making.