The Needs of the Personnel Working in Local Administrations in Studying Further in Public Health Field in Northeast, Thailand

Abstract

To provide effective and efficient teaching and learning, institutions should be concerned about the needs of job market, especially improving the curriculums to conform to the market and local needs. As a result, studying the needs of organizations or job market to improve the personnel working in the organizations is needed. Therefore, the researchers surveyed the needs of the personnel working in local administrations in public health studying. The purposes of this study were to  find out study the needs of the personnel working in local administrations in studying further in public health, the needs of the local administrations requiring to develop the personnel in public health field and to study the basic information of public health personnel working in local administrations. The results of the study were revealed as follows.

1. For the needs in studying further of the personnel working in local administrations, it was found that obtaining master degree was required by most of local administrations (47.71 percent), and bachelor degree was the second rank (43.51 percent). The most needed major was public health (34.55 percent), then environmental health (33.09 percent) and environmental management (32.66 percent) respectively. Municipal offices would like their personnel to obtain mater degree more than sub-district administrative organizations and the municipal offices also wanted their personnel to study in environmental health than in other fields (public health and environmental management).On the other hand, the sub-district administrative organizations wanted their personnel to study further in public health field than in other fields (environmental health and environmental management). The year 2010 was expected to have the highest number of personnel studying further and the year 2011 was the second rank.
2. For the need to increase the personnel working in public health field of the local administrations, it was found that there were 624 organizations wanting to increase the public health personnel. The sub-district administrative organizations were the organizations which needed the public health personnel most (462 organizations), considered as 74.04 percent. 162 organizations under the municipal offices needed the public health personnel, considered as 25.96 percent. Public health was the field needed the highest number of the personnel and environmental health was the second rank. Bachelor degree was the most needed and master degree was the second rank. For the need to develop the public health personnel of the local administrations, it was shown that most of the local administrations still wanted to support their personnel (67.02 percent) and they also wanted to provide scholarship for the students who have just finished M.6 to study further and work with their organizations after graduation (32.98 percent).
3. For the number of public health personnel, it was shown that there were 1,239 public health personnel working in local administrations: 784 personnel working as municipal offices and another group of 455 working in sub-district administrative organizations.