Workforce Assessment

The majority of African countries lack sufficient human resources for health (HRH) to deliver basic maternal, newborn, child health (MNCH) care, particularly in rural areas. To inform planning for the scarce HRH available, specifically as it pertains to the Millennium Development Goals and the post-2015 agenda, a rapid systematic review of evidence on training and deployment policies for doctors, nurses and midwives for MNCH in rural Africa was undertaken. [from abstract]

This study intends to provide an update of the status of the human resources for health (HRH) subsystem in six countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)—Colombia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay. The study’s discussion centers around five questions: how the health workforce is financed, how it is organized, how it is managed, how it is regulated, and how it performs. Further, the study strives to understand what role, if any, performance management policies and incentives play in these countries’ HRH subsystems.

Ineffective district health management potentially impacts on health system performance and service delivery. However, little is known about district health managing practices and time allocation in resource-constrained health systems. Therefore, a time use study was conducted in order to understand current time use practices of district health managers in Ghana. [from abstract]

This study sought to assess the staff requirements, work load and performance with respect to the CH work force
using workload indicator of staffing need (WISN) tool. The ultimate objective was to provide information to guide the organization, management and development of the work force. [from abstract]

The health systems in the Americas region are characterized by fragmentation and segmentation, which constitute an important barrier to expanding coverage, achieving integrated primary health care, and reducing inefficiency and discontinuity of care. [from abstract]

The aim of this article was to compare the advance of women with that of men and determine the differences between hierarchical status and professional recognition achieved by women in medicine. Methods A retrospective study was carried out in the Hospital Clinic Barcelona, Spain, of the period from 1996 to 2008. [from abstract]

The aim of this study is to assess the factors affecting performance of nurses in Prince Sultan Military Medical City (PSMMC) Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. [from abstract]

This paper uses a secondary data analysis of existing documents by the Ministry of Public Health, Institut National de la Statistique, des Etudes Economiques et Démographiques(INSEED), the Ministry of Economy and Agence Française de Cooperation to analyze critically the shape and performance of health systems in Chad based on key concepts and
components of the right to health contained in article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and on General Comment 14. [from abstract]

This review analyses various approaches to health workforce planning and presents the Six-Step Methodology to Integrated Workforce Planning which highlights essential elements in workforce planning to ensure the quality of services. [from abstract]

This paper is a comparative analysis between China’s and Myanmar’s health systems, viewed through the WHO’s six building blocs of health systems: service delivery, health workforce, health information, access to essential medicines, health financing, leadership or governance.

In 2003, the Government of Ethiopia launched the Health Extension Programme and introduced a new cadre, health extension workers (HEWs), to improve access to care in rural communities. In 2013, to inform the government’s plans for HEWs to take on an enhanced role in community-based newborn care, a time and motion study was conducted to understand the range of HEW responsibilities and how they allocate their time across health and non-health activities. [from abstract]

This report describes the proceedings and main outcomes of the Third Global Forum on Human Resources for Health in Recife, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2013.

Zonal Hospital, Mandi identified that they were not identifying women with high risk conditions during their antenatal care (ANC) clinic. By re-organizing the clinic, the hospital was able to increase the proportion of pregnant women identified as being at high-risk from 1.6% to 12.3% in a matter of weeks. [from abstract]

Uganda, like other low-income sub-Saharan African countries, bears a heavy burden of surgical conditions with low surgical output in health facilities and significant unmet need for surgical care. To address this lack of adequate surgical services in Uganda, a diverse group of local stakeholders met in Kampala, Uganda, in May 2008 to develop a roadmap of key policy actions that would improve surgical services at the national level.This article is a critical discussion of these health policy priorities with references to recent literature. [adapted from abstract]

While discussing larger philosophical topics on the role of assessment, participants at this two-day workshop also debated the role of assessments in so-called new disciplines and how these appraisals will lead to a ‘new professionalism’. [adapted from summary]

This report presents the results of a consultancy to facilitate agreement and document current flexibility of funding streams for HRH in Ethiopia, building on existing work and within national frameworks for priority actions on HRH to develop strategies and country level actions. [adapted from author]

The authors aimed to assess the extent of association or agreement between different spatially explicit nationwide general practitioner (GP) workforce data sets in Australia to identify any disagreements that would imply differential relationships with primary healthcare relevant outcomes with different data sets. The study also enumerates these associations across categories of rurality or remoteness. [adapted from abstract]

The purpose of this study was to propose a physician supply forecasting methodology by applying system dynamics modeling to estimate future absolute and relative numbers of physicians. [from abstract]

This study tested a workforce projection model in the Netherlands by comparing the ex-post projected number of general practitioners with the observed number of general practitioners between 1998 and 2011. [adapted from abstract]

This study identified variables that were significantly related to physician and nurse employment rates in the public healthcare sector in Serbia from 1961 to 2008 and used these to develop parameters to model physician and nurse supply in the public healthcare sector through to 2015. [from abstract]

To portray the different possible developments in the supply of nursing professionals, the authors projected the supply of formally trained nurses and the potential supply of persons who are able to work in a nursing professioncalculated on the basis of empirical information on occupational mobility from a national census. [adapted from abstract]

The authors conducted a longitudinal study to explore the current situation and track the future evolution of the rural healthcare workforce, specifically village doctors, in China. [adapted from abstract]

To address the lack of information to guide the development of policies and programs on HRH, this book aims to paint a comprehensive picture on HRH, consolidating new and existing evidence. The book highlights in particular new evidence on some of the underlying determinants impacting stock, distribution and performance of health workers in Ghana, including health worker production and attrition, management and accountability structures, the capacity of health training institutions, and health worker compensation. [from author]

The main objective of this assessment was to determine human resources availability in the pharmaceutical sector in Sudan. The assessment was done in six states and included the Ministry of Health and its agencies, pharmacy education providers, public health facilities, private retail pharmacies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and local pharmaceutical companies. [adapted from author]

The report provides available data on the health workforce in PALOP. Its purpose is to support the responsible staff and partners to identify the needs for intervention, in order to improve the national and regional capacity for the development of human resources for health. [from summary]

This study forecasts physician supply between 2012 and 2030 using cohort analysis, based on future production capacity and losses from the profession, and assesses if, and by when, the projected numbers of physicians would meet the targets of one doctor per 1,500 population. [from abstract]

This introduction to Tanzania’s health system and acute workforce shortage familiarizes readers with the context in which health professions education takes place. [from abstract]

This study sought to identify factors necessary for effective development of health manpower in the low-resourced Bayelsa State. [adapted from abstract]

This short (4:38 minutes) video shares information about the Health Systems 20/20 assessment of the health system in Cote d’Ivoire. Based on the findings, the project worked with in-country partners to improve production of health workers, create incentives to motivate health workers to move to the underserved north, and build health management capacity. [from publisher]

The current article describes research to determine the physician supply and demand across the State of Hawai’i. [from abstract]