Tools & Guides

This good practice guide is intended as a practical guide for trust boards and managers to help them to use temporary nursing staff effectively. The guide comprises a narrative of the salient points in the use and management of temporary nursing staff and includes a number of good practice checklists. It also provides case studies drawn from study visits and the work of the Department of Health’s National Agency Staffing Project. [from preface]

Experience has shown that governments have different kinds of HRH policies, strategies and plans even when they are within the overall context of national health policies and strategies. This document provides guidance on the process with proposals of content for three basic HRH documents: situation analysis, policy, and strategic plan. [from foreword]

The NHS in Scotland is facing unprecedented change and is looking to transform existing models of health care. It also reinforces that improvements in healthcare will be achieved by new and more efficient ways of working, such as using the skills of nurses and allied health
professionals to take on more roles and give patients more choice. This document presents a generic framework to guide the development of new roles. It can be used to assist in the planning process to ensure that roles are needs led, meet governance requirements, are sustainable, as well as ensuring that the development is supported by the whole team thus ensuring its success.

This framework encompasses the healthcare workforce planning skills and competences required at both strategic and operational level, for all types of staff, including chief executives, directors, clinicians, service development managers, ward managers, workforce planners, and contributes to the building of capability in human resource management identified in the HR in the NHS Plan. [publisher’s description]

The aims of these guidelines are to provide information about the concepts and processes essential for quality assurance of basic nursing and midwifery education in the African Region; propose a process and content for evaluating existing basic nursing and midwifery education programs; stimulate ideas for establishing a quality assurance system for basic nursing and midwifery education; guide allocation of human and financial resources in current and future programmes and services; provide well-defined international and regional standards of education. [from introduction]

Section 6, “Developing Human Resources for Health,” describes the dire shortage of human resources in the health systems of low and middle income countries and the special challenges posed by this crisis. It touches on ways of addressing shortages of qualified staff and gives several examples of how countries can use technical support to build stronger a health workforce. [author’s description]

This document focuses on FP integration with HIV services, more specifically with HIV care and treatment services. It encourages supervisors or planners, service providers, and community-based personnel to consider opportunities for operationalizing client-responsive integration of FP and HIV services.

This document provides a systematic framework for establishing and maintaining community home-based care (CHBC) in resource-limited settings for people with HIV/AIDS and those with other chronic or disabling conditions.

This model for strengthening the midwife and hilot partnership was developed to improve the quality and accessibility of maternity and newborn care services (MNCS) in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). It aims to provide quality MNCS at various service settings like the home, community and health facilities. [introduction]

This is a guideline to replicate and scale-up a human resources promising practice documented by the Capacity Project for outsourcing human resources services (HRS) to obtain a rapid increase and deployment of the health workforce, making HIV services available in a short period of time, especially in underserved areas.

This guideline is for human resources planners and managers in the health sector and sets out the steps required to extend the health workforce by incorporating lay workers (field officers), especially in the delivery of antiretroviral therapy (ART) to home-based clients.

This best practice guideline focuses on nursing teams and processes that foster healthy work environments. The focus for the development of this guideline was collaborative practice among nursing teams with the view that this may be a first stage in a multi-staged process that could eventually result in interprofessional guidelines. A healthy work environment for nurses is a practice setting that maximizes the health and well being of nurses, quality patient outcomes and organizational performance. Effective nursing teamwork is essential to the work in health care organizations. [from purpose]

A tool designed to help program and training managers, curriculum designers and trainers facilitate the operationalization and assessment of gender sensitivity during pre- and in-service training of service providers.

Health care organizations often do not know what their costs are and have no simple way of assessing costs on a regular basis… This cost analysis tool involves site administrators and service providers themselves in measuring recurrent direct costs of providing services. [author’s description]

This manual describes the purpose and processes for developing and using a system of Human Resources for Health (HRH) performance indicators in order to monitor the activities of a public sector health service. It is particularly aimed at enhancing the management process in developing countries and draws on experiences of pilot work. [from purpose]

The complex and wide ranging challenges related to human resources for health in developing countries necessitate that stakeholders work together through inclusive alliances and networks. This kit aims to offer those wanting to create a partnership, as well as those already working in one, some easily accessible tools to support that process. [from introduction]

The manual is designed to help the ILO’s partners understand the issues and apply the ILO Code of Practice on HIV/AIDS and the world of work. The Code is at the core of the ILO’s Programme on HIV/AIDS, providing guidance to governments, employers and workers, as well as other stakeholders, on national action plans and workplace policies and programmes to combat HIV/AIDS.

The objective of this code is to provide a set of guidelines to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the world of work and within the framework of the promotion of decent work. The guidelines cover the following key areas of action: prevention of HIV/AIDS; management and mitigation of the impact of HIV/AIDS on the world of work; care and support of workers infected and affected by HIV/AIDS; elimination of stigma and discrimination on the basis of real or perceived HIV status. [from preface]

The focus of this guide is the measurement of capacity for the purpose of monitoring and evaluating capacity-building interventions. It responds to a demand among public health planners, evaluators, and practitioners for advice on assessing the many aspects of health programming that fall under the rubric of capacity building. [author’s description]

The HRH Action Framework presented here is designed to assist governments and health managers to develop and implement strategies to achieve an effective and sustainable health workforce. By using a comprehensive approach, the Framework will help you address staff shortages, uneven distribution of staff, gaps in skills and competencies, low retention and poor motivation, among other challenges. [publisher’s description] This website guides users through the HRH development process using indicators, resources, tools and guidelines.

This best practice guideline aims to identify and describe: leadership practices that result in healthy outcomes for nurses, patients/clients, organizations and systems; system resources that support effective leadership practices; organizational culture, values and resources that support effective leadership practices; personal resources that support effective leadership practices; and anticipated outcomes of effective nursing leadership. [author’s description]

Strengthening access to a range of HIV-related services for those in need and promoting communication among service providers requires a formalized referral network of providers. However, little information about how to create these networks and few standardized tools to facilitate effective network functioning are available. This document aims to describe several models of referral networks and to provide tools and instructions that can be adapted to different settings.

This Royal College of Nursing (RCN) publication is designed to assist you in your role as a mentor to pre-registration nursing and midwifery students. It outlines your responsibilities alongside those of the student, higher education institutions (HEIs) and placement providers. [introduction]

This guidance sets out some of the key issues faced by IRNs, and suggests good practice for managers in overcoming these problems to create a new workforce whose wellbeing and professional status is at the forefront of recruitement policies. [from introduction]

For employment contracts not covered by collective agreements, individual nurses must be able to negotiate salaries and conditions of employment commensurate with their position and job functions. The purpose of these guidelines is to assist nurses in applying for senior positions and includes a review of the position, the application processes in its broader context and a clarification of both individual and collective employment contracts and how these relate to senior positions. [from preface]

Many health care organisations recognise the importance of taking a proactive approach to dealing with workplace harassment and bullying. Its effects are harmful to all concerned – the people directly involved in a complaint, team members and the whole organisation…This document provides guidance for managers and RCN negotiators on good practice in dealing with workplace bullying and harassment. [from introduction]

This leaflet has been designed as an introduction to clinical supervision. It aims to stimulate ideas and to encourage occupational health nurses to set up supervision practice in their workplaces. Clinical supervision isn’t a management tool, but can be used as a support and prompt to professional practice in a creative way. [from introduction]

Electronic learning: a guide for nurse educators has been written by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Education Forum in response to growing interest in new learning technologies, both from individual nursing educators and as a result of education policy initiatives. The guidance sets out what we mean by e-learning, the skills that you as nursing educators, and your learners, will need for electronic learning, and the range of learning technology opportunities. [from introduction]

This guide is aimed mainly at nursing students. It should help you to: recognize if you or a collegue are being bullied or harassed; take action against bullying or harassment; raise awareness of the problem with employers, educators and students; encourage nursing educators and employers to carry through anti-harassment policies. [from introduction]

These documents aim for a level of staffing and skill mix that is determined by patient need and level of dependency to ensure that patients’ needs are met. Therefore, effective workforce planning is essential. This guidance looks at the considerations for employers, senior nurses and others planning staffing needs at ward, unit and organisational level. [from introduction]