Tailor-Made Distance Education as a Retention Strategy

In rural areas of Thailand, health center personnel are responsible for primary health care. The opportunity for continuing education is imperative in the attraction and retention of these workers at their primary locations. The provision of continuing education also increases the quality and spectrum of health care available for the local people leading to better health outcomes for the Thai population. Distance education is one promising form of continuing education involving the use of advanced communication technologies to allow health center staff to continue to work and study off-campus. This chapter describes a tailor-made “Learning at the Workplace” distance education program provided to Thai rural health center personnel through the College of Public Health Sciences at Chulalongkorn University. Focus group discussions and selected quantitative research methods are recommended to evaluate the effectiveness of this learning model and determine the educational needs of health workers. Learning at the Workplace is expected to make a new contribution to the local needs of continuing education among the health care workforce in Thailand. This chapter emphasizes the potential that distance education offers to attract and retain health care personnel as well as the importance of providing a tailor-made curriculum in response to different regional and epidemiological factors.