Abstract
One of the missions of the Faculty of Medicine, Naresuan University is to produce medical graduates to serve the Collaborative Project to Increase Production of Rural Doctor (CPIRD). The project recruits 145 students who reside in any of the 5 provinces in Health Region 2 annually. After graduation, the medical graduates are deployed to work at rural hospitals of the five provinces. The Faculty of Medicine aims to apply outcome-based curriculum to develop the graduate’s attributes according to the expectations of all stakeholders particularly of the community hospital directors. Thus, the present study was carried out to find the expectations of the community hospital directors in Health Region 2 to provide the basis for developing a medical curriculum satisfying community needs. Method: A cross-sectional descriptive survey was done using a structured and validated questionnaire to all community hospital directors in Health Region 2. Results: Based on the expectations of the respondents, leadership skill and teamwork, patient empowerment, health promotion and disease prevention, patient-centered care, and patient safety were regarded as the top five instructional topics significant to medical practice in community hospitals. Problem-based learning (PBL) was cited as the most beneficial learning approach. On the contrary, the respondents indicated that the medical graduates did not have adequate knowledge on the community health system. Conclusion: The above specified instruction topics and PBL should be incorporated into the learning experience. Moreover, instruction topics related to the WHO 6 building blocks of a health system are useful for practicing at community hospital. As a result, there should be the health system sciences in the medical curriculum aside from basic and clinical sciences in order to produce graduates conforming to the needs of society.
