Rural job preferences of graduate class medical students in Ethiopia-a discrete choice experiment (DCE).

BACKGROUND: Human resource is one of the health system's building blocks, which ultimately leads to improved health status, equity, and efficiency. However, human resources in the health sector are characterized by high attrition, distributional imbalance, and geographic inequalities in urban and rural settings. METHODS: An discrete choice experiment (DCE) with 16 choice tasks with two blocks containing five attributes (salary, housing, drug and medical equipment, year of experience before study leave, management support, and workload) were conducted. A latent class and mixed logit model were fitted to estimate the rural job preferences and heterogeneity. Furthermore, the relative importance, willingness to accept and marginal choice probabilities were calculated. Finally, the interaction of preference with age and sex was tested. RESULTS: A total of 352 (5632 observations) final-year medical students completed the choice tasks. On average, respondents prefer to work with a higher salary with a superior housing allowance In addition, respondents prefer a health facility with a stock of drug and medical equipment which provide education opportunities after one year of service with supportive management with a normal workload. Young medical students prefer lower service years more than older students. Besides age and service year, we do not find an interaction between age/sex and rural job preference attributes. A three-class latent class model best fits the data. The salary was the most important attribute in classes 1 and 3. Contrary to the other classes, respondents in class 2 do not have a significant preference for salary. Respondents were willing to accept an additional 4271 ETB (104.2 USD), 1998 ETB (48.7 USD), 1896 ETB (46.2 USD), 1869 (45.6 USD), and 1175 ETB (28.7 USD) per month for the inadequate drug and medical supply, mandatory two years of service, heavy workload, unsupportive management, and basic housing, respectively. CONCLUSION: Rural job uptake by medical students was influenced by all the attributes, and there was individual and group-level heterogeneity in preference. Policymakers should account for the job preferences and heterogeneity to incentivize medical graduates to work in rural settings and minimize attrition.

The Influenceof Parallel Reporting SystemsonData Quality and Information Use in Northwest Ethiopia: Qualitative Study

Background:Ethiopia utilisesthedistrict health information systemfor health information management. However,the lower level health structure seems inaccurate in comparisonto theparallel reportingsystem, withlimited evidence on its effect ondata quality and information use.Therefore,the present study aimed to assess the influence of a parallel reporting system on data quality and information use at the lower level structuresof the Amhara region, Northwest Ethiopia.Methods:The study was conducted in five districts of the Amhara region using an explanatory case study design. Twenty respondents were interviewed from the 1st­30thApril 2021,usinga semi-structured key informant interview(KII)guide with multiple probes to explore relevant information. The data was transcribed into English and transferred to the Open-Code 4.02 software for analysis. Textual data werecoded, and themes were identified from the synthesis. Inductive thematic analysis was applied to identify the relationships among the emerging themes in order todraw a relevant conclusion. Results:Five themeswere emerged fromthe analysis, includingthe current practice of parallel reporting, a program area of parallel reporting, the influence of parallel reporting, reasonsfor parallel reporting,and means to avoid parallel reporting.Likewise, parallelreportingwasdone at the district level and at the point of service delivery. The respondents described maternal and child health programs often usingparallel reporting. Parallel reporting was described as havingundesirable impacts on routinely collected health data quality and use. Moreover, it increases the work burden; andaffects service quality,the the satisfactionlevelsof clients and staff, and the overall efficiency. The main reasons for practicingparallel reporting were:missing important data elements in DHIS2, single language, varying stakeholders' interests, and lack of conductinga partnerforum.Conclusion and implication:Against the national health information system'sguiding principlesand vision, parallelreporting is practicedat the lower health system levelsfor various programs. Therefore, a corrective measure should be taken to achieve the country's information revolution (IR) agenda. To avoid parallel reporting mechanisms, it is recommended that regular partner forums at the district level must be strengthened, important data elements should beincorporated into the DHIS 2, and additional language platforms should be be included in theDHIS2 system.