Towards Integrating Health Economics into Medical Education in Thailand

Abstract

Objective: To describe the attempts to integrate health economics (HE) into medical education in Thailand. Materials and Methods: A national survey was launched to all medical education centers in Thailand to discern the situation and gaps in HE teaching. Discussions about improving HE education were held among experienced educators. As a result, the HE working group, comprising experienced medical teachers in HE, was initiated with the aim of recommending the essential contents for HE education. The HE working group also helped preparing a HE curriculum and instructional media assisted general medical educators in HE teaching. Distribution of learning materials developed was planned. Results: Results from the survey revealed gaps in HE teaching, including the lack of HE teaching in clinical curricula, inconsistency in teaching standards, and scarcity of teaching materials and resource persons. The HE working group developed a spiral-based HE curriculum for medical training from undergraduate to graduate levels. Moreover, HE study guides were proposed as teaching aids. Additionally, an example to integrate HE into other medical discipline was demonstrated in the undergraduate curriculum of Family Medicine. Workshops “training for the trainers” were successfully arranged twice. All produced materials, including HE essential contents, curriculum, and study guides, as well as teaching experience were shared to the medical teachers in this regard. Conclusion: While a number of efforts had been established to integrate HE into medical education, further attempts are still required to continuously improve HE teaching. Keywords: Health economics; Study guide; Curriculum; Situation