What do doctors want? Incentives to increase rural recruitment and retention in India
نویسندگان
چکیده
Introduction On the occasion the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) completing its five years, Mr. G B Azad, minister of health and family welfare, declared in his speech “the non-availability of critical human resources continues to be an even larger challenge for which there are no easy solutions”. One of the key priorities of NRHM is to increase availability of human resources in rural India. Distribution of doctors in India remains highly skewed towards urban areas. Most doctors are employed in the private healthcare sector while many vacancies persist in the government healthcare sector, particularly in rural areas. State governments experience difficulties in staffing rural health centres which in turn undermines various initiatives by NRHM to strengthen rural health services such as making primary health centres and first referral units to work round the clock, and implementation of Indian Public Health Standards. In this study we examine what doctors expect in order to work in rural areas. We examine career preferences of medical students as well as in-service medical officers working at primary health centres in order to identify incentives that would attract and retain them in rural health services. Our findings inform current practices and policies in regard to recruiting and retaining doctors in rural India.
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