Resource Spotlight: From Staff Mix to Skill Mix and Beyond: Towards a Systemic Approach to Health Workforce Management
Throughout the world, countries are experiencing shortages of health care workers. Policy-makers and system managers have developed a range of methods and initiatives to optimize the available workforce and achieve the right number and mix of personnel needed to provide high-quality care. This literature review found that such initiatives often focus more on staff types than on staff members' skills and the effective use of those skills. This review describes evidence about the benefits and pitfalls of current approaches to human resources optimization in health care. The authors conclude that in order to use human resources most effectively, health care organizations must consider a more systemic approach - one that accounts for factors beyond narrowly defined human resources management practices and includes organizational and institutional conditions. [abstract]
View this resource.
The HRH Global Resource Center has other resources on this topic including:
- How Can Optimal Skill Mix be Effectively Implemented and Why?
- Task Shifting for a Strategic Skill Mix
- Toolkit for Implementing Workload Indicators of Staffing Need (WISN) to Improve Health Workforce Planning and Management in Decentralized Health Systems
For additional resources on this topic, visit the Skill Mix Imbalance and Human Resource Management subject categories.
Past Resource Spotlights
- What Countries Can Do Now: Twenty-Nine Actions to Scale-Up and Improve the Health Workforce
- Scaling Up Proven Public Health Interventions through a Locally Owned and Sustained Leadership Development Program in Rural Upper Egypt
- Planning the Development of Human Resources for Health for Implementation of the Stop TB Strategy
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