Persuading medical doctors to work in rural areas is one of the main challengesudfacing health policy makers, in both developing and developed countries. Discrete choiceudexperiments (DCEs) have increasingly been used to analyze the preferences of healthudworkers, and how they would respond to alternative incentives associated with workingudin a rural location. Previous DCE studies focusing on the rural recruitment and retentionudproblem have sampled either in-service health workers or students in the final year ofudtheir training program. This study is the first to sample both of these groups in the sameudsetting. We carry out a DCE to compare how doctors and final-year medical students inudVietnam value six job attributes, and use the results to simulate the impact of alternativeudincentive packages on recruitment in rural areas. Results show significant differencesudbetween the two groups. The location of workplace (rural or urban) was by far the mostudimportant attribute for doctors; for medical students it was long-term education. Moreudsurprising, however, was the magnitude of the differences: there were fivefolduddifferences in willingness-to-pay estimates for some job attributes. These differencesudstrongly suggest that policy makers in Vietnam should consider moving away from theudcurrent uniform approach to rectifying rural shortages and tailor separate incentiveudpackages to students and doctors. Our results also suggest that future DCE studies shouldudcarefully consider the choice of sample if results are to be used for policy making.
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