BHUBANESWAR: Even as the Naveen Patnaik Government has effected a steep rise in pay packages to make rural postings for doctors lucrative, medicos are still not too keen to serve in villages or backward regions of the State.
Not even one in five students in Government medical colleges is ready to commit himself or herself to rural health service. Much worse, in private colleges, as high as 91 per cent of students are unwilling to work in rural areas, a survey across medical institutions has revealed.
As many as 390 medicos in their final year of MBBS at three Government medical colleges and three private colleges were interviewed on the aspect of career goals and an overwhelming mood was to go for post-graduation studies and then join Government service. However, even though 64 per cent of Government medical college students and nearly 50 per cent from private institutions aimed at getting into Government service in the long term, 83 per cent of the former and 91 per cent of the latter wanted urban postings only.
The findings of the explorative study ‘Rural service preference of medical students’ conducted by researchers from Indian Institute of Public Health, Bhubaneswar and Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi are significant and worrying at the same time. Of all Indian States, Odisha faces the worst shortage of doctors with around 30 per cent posts at various levels lying vacant. The number of doctors per 10,000 population in the State is three times lower than others like Goa and Kerala.
Though the State Government has initiated moves to establish new colleges both in public and private sectors, more number of doctors might not be an answer as a major chunk of them are not interested in working in rural areas.
“Opportunities for career growth, better lifestyle and more scope for higher education are the main reasons for wanting urban positing. Most of the students, however, opined that higher salaries combined with better workplace facilities and good housing would attract more into rural service,” researcher Dr Sanghamitra Pati said.
In Odisha, where over 85 per cent of the population resides in villages, it is essential that more than two-thirds of total doctors be placed in rural areas. But the present scenario is such that one-third of the State’s PHCs and CHCs are functioning without doctors. The current medical education system is too much inclined towards tertiary care with minimal exposure to community-based healthcare. This automatically instils the preference for specialisation among students.
“In the West, there is a discipline for general practitioners (GPs) or primary care. If introduced in the State, it could go a long way in mitigating the shortage of GPs here. Besides, there should be greater community engagement and community-based medical education in all institutions,” Pati said.
The study conducted by the team comprising Srinivas Nallala, Subhasish Swain, Sanju Das, S K Kasam along with Pati is published in the latest issue of Journal of Family and Community Medicine.