Latest Resources

This edition of Contact magazine focuses on pharmaceutical human resources, who are crucial for the delivery of quality health care. Church health systems in particular have to take up the challenge of attracting, motivating and retraining qualified pharmaceutical human resources. [from author]

This brief outlines collaborations with Catholic, Protestant and Muslim faith-based organizations (FBOs) to expand family planning options to underserved populations while helping FBOs increase services to their communities. [from author]

This study in Uganda aimed to untangle the intrinsic motivation, retention, and performance factors for health workers faith-based facilities compared to public sector health workers. [adapted from publisher]

This article discusses health workers’ preferences for workplace and their perceptions and experiences of the differences in working conditions in the public health sector versus the church-run health facilities in Tanzania. The broader aim is to generate knowledge that can add to debates on health sector management in low-income contexts. [from abstract]

This paper demonstrates the use of the workload indicator of staffing needs methodology in determining staffing requirements for the nursing staff in a hospital setting. It shows how the results can be used to assess overstaffing and understaffing as well as determine the work pressure among the different categories of nurses thus providing a basis for effective nurse redistribution to exploit efficiency gains without compromising the quality of services. [from abstract]

This researched aimed to determine whether hospitals with a good organisation of care (such as improved nurse staffing and work environments) can affect patient care and nurse workforce stability in European countries. [from abstract]

This edition of Hotline, an HRH newletter focused on the needs of faith-based organizations (FBOs) in Africa, highlights resources, trainings and workshops, articles of interest and other information for FBO HRH pracitioners.

To calculate an appropriate number of Physician Density (PD) for a specific country, this study was designed to create a PD prediction model, based on health-related data from many countries. [from abstract]

There is a global need to assess physicians’ professional performance in actual clinical practice. This study focuses on the reliability and validity, the influences of some sociodemographic biasing factors, associations between self and other evaluations, and the number of evaluations needed for reliable assessment of a physician based on the three instruments used for the multisource assessment of physicians’ professional performance in the Netherlands. [from abstract]

This policy brief addresses the role of partnerships between health workers and the community, for the purposes of improving maternal, newborn and child health in resource-constrained settings, with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region. [from author]

This policy brief summarises the critical workforce issues
highlighted from a review of the literature of maternal,
newborn and child health services at community
level, with a particular focus on the Asia Pacific region. [from author]

The shortage of human resources in health (HRH) in Africa remains severe and continues to be a major impediment to increasing coverage of HIV-related services. This eToolkit is meant to serve as a resource for those dealing with aspects of the HRH crisis, including individuals and organizations who wish to familiarize themselves with the various components of HRH, focusing primarily on Southern Africa. [adapted from author]

This paper describes the research design and methodology of the multicenter, multidisciplinary study evaluating the quality and provision of primary midwifery care. [adapted from abstract]

This study aimed to evaluate students’ learning outcomes from a redesigned eLearning version of the reproductive health section of a public health course, as measured by improved knowledge acquisition and opinions, and to assess e-course utilization. [adapted from abstract]

This article reports on a three week-long program of collaborative learning courses, in which 19 mental health professionals and 12 mental health service users participated. Data were analysed to consider the ways in which participants interacted, and how this contributed to the goal of online learning about using internet technologies for mental health practice. [adapted from abstract]

This article describes the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Health Policy Research Institute’s (HPRI) role in collecting, analyzing and disseminating information about the surgical workforc in the United States, as suggests it as a possible model to assist in government surgical workforce planning. [adapted from author]

This report details two assessment in Niger - a rapid assessment of human resources systems including the current recruitment, deployment, reward, supervision, evaluation, training and career advancement systems from the central to the district levels; and a site-level assessments that looked at the impact of those systems on health workers and at their overall engagement. [adapted from summary]

This study examines the issues, in the Ugandan context, with strategies to shift facility and community-based tasks to “expert patients,” clients who are recruited and trained to provide suport services for other clients in facilities and in communities. [adapted from summary]

This report summarizes the findings of a qualitative study on health workers’ performance and career in Rwanda to identify bottlenecks, strengths and shortcomings for human resources in the health sector, as perceived by both health workers and users of health services. [adapted from summary]

This paper summarises the findings from the second wave of a cohort study with health workers in Ethiopia including data on: where they end up and how health workers are distributed; career preferences and how they have changed; what is important in the choice between rural and urban areas; and what drives the likelihood to migrate abroad. [from summary]

The objectives of this study were to estimate the economic value of community health workers (CHW), current CHW’s workload and responsibilities, and to obtain a preliminary understanding of CHWs’ opinions of the role they serve in their communities (job satisfaction) and how these services are viewed by members of their communities. [adapted from summary]

This paper reports the findings of the Zambian study pertaining to human resources for health, including issues with high staff vacancies, high rates of absenteeism and tardiness, impact on patients and the coping mechanisms health workers are employing to augment their incomes. [adapted from summary]

This report contains results from descriptive analysis of a cohort study with final year health students in Ethiopia to build a base line for a cohort survey with future health workers and to provide insights on the supply side aspect of human resources in the health sector. [adapted from summary]

Using qualitative data from Rwanda, this study focuses on four institutional factors that affect health worker performance and career choice: incentives, monitoring arrangements, professional norms and health workers’ intrinsic motivation. It also provides illustrations of three institutional innovations that work, at least in the context of Rwanda: performance pay, the establishment of community health workers and increased attention to the training of health workers. [adapted from introduction]

The government of Rwanda has identified human resources for health as one of its policy priorities. This study aims to contribute to building a better understanding of health worker choice and behaviour, and to improve evidence based polcies. [from summary]