Abstract :
Introduction: India is facing acute shortage of doctors in rural areas. The government wants to
make it compulsory for all MBBS graduates who have completed their internship to do one year
of rural service if they wish to pursue post-graduation.
Objective: The current study was planned to assess feasibility and acceptability of rural posting
among medical students.
Materials and Methods: It was a mixed-approach study design with both qualitative and
quantitative approach conducted among 163 medical undergraduate students from three major
medical colleges of Delhi. Focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted among medical
students followed by a cross-sectional questionnaire based research. Data was analyzed using
SPSS software version 17. Quantitative data was presented in mean±SD and proportion. For
qualitative data, thematic analysis was done.
Results: A total of 163 students participated in the study. 123 (75.5%) of participants were
females and 40 (23.3%) were males with a mean age of 19.92±2.45 years. Less than 15% of the
students accepted positively for rural posting. Insufficient incentive, security problems, cultural
differences from the rural population, lack of infrastructure in rural settings, political motives in
implementing rural posting, etc., were main reasons discouraging students from rural posting.
Conclusion: It can be concluded that acceptability of rural posting was poor among medical
students. Lack of infrastructure, security, and inadequate monetary incentives were some of the
major issues for implementation of compulsory rural posting.
Keyword :
Medical students, Rural posting, Medical education, Training,