title: How to attract health students to remote areas in Indonesia: a discrete choice experiment.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Remote areas of Indonesia lack sufficient health workers to meet the health-care needs of the population. There is an urgent need for evidence regarding interventions to attract health workers and specifically health students to serve in remote areas. The aim of this research was to analyze the job preferences of health students to develop effective policies to improve the recruitment and retention of health students in remote areas.
  
  
  METHODS
  A discrete choice experiment was conducted to investigate health students' preferences regarding job characteristics. This study was conducted in three different regions of Indonesia, with a total included 400 health students. Mixed logit models were used to explore the stated preferences for each attribute.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Data were collected from 150 medical, 150 nursing and 100 midwifery students. Medical students gave the highest preference for receiving study assistance, while nursing students viewed salary as the most important. Midwifery students valued advanced quality facilities as an important attribute.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study confirmed the importance of combination interventions in attracting and retaining health workers in remote areas of Indonesia. Money is not the only factor affecting student preferences to take up a rural post; good management and better facilities were viewed as important by all health students. Addressing health student preferences, which are the candidate of future health workforce, would help the nation solve the recruitment and retention issues. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Allied Health Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.|Faculty of Nursing, Airlangga University, Indonesia.
authors.forename: Ferry
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Efendi
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing/Institute of Allied Health Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Ching-Min
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Nursing, Airlangga University, Indonesia.
authors.forename: Nursalam
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Nursalam
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Nursing, Airlangga University, Indonesia.
authors.forename: Nurul Wachyu Fitriyah
authors.initials: NW
authors.lastname: Andriyani
authors.affiliation: Center of Planning and Management of Human Resources for Health, Ministry of Health, Indonesia.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kurniati
authors.affiliation: School of Health and Human Sciences, Southern Cross University, Australia.
authors.forename: Susan Alison
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Nancarrow
mesh_terms: D002321:Career Choice; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007214:Indonesia; D008297:Male; D010560:Personnel Selection / Q000379:methods; D010563:Personnel Turnover; D019035:Rural Health Services; D013336:Students, Health Occupations / Q000523:psychology; D013337:Students, Medical; D013338:Students, Nursing; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D000078329:Workforce; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Discrete Choice Experiment; health students; remote area; retention