Brazil

The Organizational Culture of a Brazilian Public Hospital

The objective of this research was to analyze the organizational culture of a Brazilian public hospital. It is a descriptive study with quantitative approach of data, developed in a public hospital of São Paulo State, Brazil. [from abstract]

Primary Care and Public Health Services Integration in Brazil’s Unified Health System

We examined associations between transdisciplinary collaboration, evidence-based practice, and primary care and public health services integration in Brazil’s Family Health Strategy. We aimed to identify practices that facilitate service integration and evidence-based practice. [from abstract]

Hardy Personality and Burnout Syndrome Among Nursing Students in Three Brazilian Universities—An Analytic Study

Nursing students may exhibit the characteristics of resistance to stress, such as hardiness, which can reduce the risk of burnout. However, we found only one published study about these phenomena among nursing students. Thus, we investigated the association between hardiness and burnout in such students. [from abstract]

Brazilian association of nursing: 85 years of Social Responsibility, Participation and Struggles

To analyze the documents published by the Brazilian Association of Nursing that study the entity and 85 years of social responsibility, participation and struggles. [adapted from abstract]

Human Resources for Health and Universal Health Coverage: Fostering Equity and Effective Coverage

The paper reports on country experiences using an analytical framework that examines effective coverage in relation to the availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality (AAAQ) of HRH. [from abstract]

Twenty Years of Health System Reform in Brazil An Assessment of the Sistema Único de Saúde

It has been more than 20 years since the 1988 Constitution formally established the Brazilian Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde, SUS), which established health as a fundamental right and duty of the state and started a process of fundamentally transforming Brazil’s health system. The report assesses whether the SUS reforms have transformed the health system as envisaged more than 20 years ago and whether the reforms have led to improved outcomes with regard to access to services, financial protection, and health status. [adapted from introduction]

Community Based Education in Health Professions: Global Perspectives

“Community Based Education in Health Professions: Global Perspectives” presents a collection of case studies from Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, India, Pakistan and South Africa describing different ways of planning, implementing and sustaining community-based education for health students. The case studies provide an account of what worked and what did not, the trials and errors, and the challenges and lessons learned. [adapted from introduction]

Reducing Inequities in Neonatal Mortality through Adequate Supply of Health Workers: Evidence from Newborn Health in Brazil

Using the case of Brazil, this study investigates the extent to which policies and interventions seeking to increase the accessibility of health services among the poor have been effective in decreasing neonatal mortality. [adapted from abstract]

Learning from the Brazilian Community Health Worker Model in North Wales

This article describes the rationale for the UK to learn from Brazil’s scaled-up Community Health Worker primary care strategy, starting with a pilot project in North Wales. [from abstract]

Monitoring Inequalities in the Health Workforce: The Case Study of Brazil 1991-2005

Using the case of Brazil, the authors measure changes in inequalities in the distribution of the health workforce and account for the sources of inequalities at sub-national level to identify whether policies have been effective in decreasing inequalities and increasing the density of health workers in the poorest areas between 1991 and 2005. [from abstract]

Teaching the Rational Use of Medicines to Medical Students: A Qualitative Research

The objectives of this study were develop and implement a discipline based on the World Health Organizations’s “Guide to Good Prescribing”; evaluate course acceptance by students; and assess the impact that the knowledge had on the students habits of prescribing medication in a university hospital in Brazil. [adapted from abstract]

Improving Patient Access to Specialized Health Care: The Telehealth Network of Minas Gerais, Brazil

This paper describes the development of a large, public telehealth system that supports primary care professionals in remote regions of the Brazilian as part of a government strategy to provide universal access to high-quality health care. Combining assistance and in-service education with simple and inexpensive technology, the telehealth model has been shown to be effective, technically feasible and economically viable. [adapted from publisher]

Continuity and Change in Human Resources Policies for Health: Lessons from Brazil

This paper reports on progress in implementing human resources for health policies in Brazil, in the context of the implementation and expansion of the Unified Health System. [from abstract]

Human Resources for Health and Decentralization Policy in the Brazilian Health System

This paper assesses whether the process of decentralizing human resources for health management and organization to the level of the state and municipal health departments has involved investments in technical, political and financial resources at the national level. [from abstract]

Exploring Health Workforce Inequalities: Case Studies from Three Countries

With the aim of arriving at a better understanding of specific dimensions of health workforce inequalities in their national contexts, three case studies are presented from Ethiopia, Brazil and Mexico. [from introduction]

Profiling Alumni of a Brazilian Public Dental School

Follow-up studies of former students are an efficient way to organize the entire process of professional training and curriculum evaluation. The aim of this study was to identify professional profile subgroups based on job-related variables in a sample of former students of a Brazilian public dental school. [from abstract]

Retraining Due to Illness and Its Implications in Nursing Mangement

The objective of this qualitative study was to understand how nursing professionals coped with job retraining in a public hospital after an illness. [adapted from abstract]

Pay for Performance in Brazil: UNIMED-Belo Horizonte Physician Cooperative

This case study presents the initial results of the pay-for-performance (P4P) experience of UNIMED-Belo Horizonte, a private, nonprofit organization in Brazil and provides an example of private sector P4P to improve service quality and efficiency. [from author]

Practices in Community Health Toward Equity: Contributions of Brazilian Nursing

This article discusses practices in community health, supported by life quality indicators of the Brazilian population, emphasizing nursing contributions toward social justice. It presents the current situation involving inequities in health in Brazil and Latin America with regard to the economic aspects, access to and distribution of health services, as well as the scenario of education of health professionals. [adapted from abstract]

Planejamento de recursos humanos de enfermagem: desafio para as lideranças

Propõe-se um ensaio das questões que envolvem o planejamento de recursos humanos de enfermagem na área hospitalar em nossa realidade, abordando possíveis temas para futuras pesquisas. Traça-se uma retrospectiva da evolução das pesquisas sobre dimensionamento de pessoal no país e a incorporação de novos instrumentos para avaliação da carga de trabalho com base no grau de dependência dos pacientes e nas ações de cuidado.

Course of Specialization in Public Health in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from 1926 to 2006: Lessons and Challenges

In this article we analyse Brazil’s 80 year old public health course via its history, disciplines, organization and characteristics of the student body in order to gain an insight into the development of public health in Brazil and to highlight the progress of education for professionals in this field. [adapted from author]

Measuring the Efficiency of Human Resources for Health for Attaining Health Outcomes across Subnational Units in Brazil

This background paper documents the analytical work conducted for the World Health Report 2006 to provide new evidence on the relationship between the density of human resources for health and the coverage of key health interventions, at subnational level in Brazil. The analysis highlights how socioeconomic conditions of the population moderates the ability of health workers to perform their tasks efficiently and how various policies have succeeded in increasing the coverage of antenatal care services. [from publisher]

Evaluating the Impact of Community Based Health Interventions: Evidence from Brazil's Family Health Program

The goal of this paper is twofold. It uses the recent experience of Brazil’s Family Health Program to assess the effectiveness of community based health interventions as instruments for improvements in health conditions in less developed areas. It also evaluates whether the health improvements associated with the program also brought about the changes in household behavior predicted by economic theory and noticed in other contexts. [adapted from author]

Employment and Sociodemographic Characteristics: a Study of Increasing Precarity in the Health Districts of Belo Horizonte, Brazil

The fundamental importance of human resources for the development of health care systems is recognized the world over. Health districts, which constitute the middle level of the municipal health care system in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, deal with demands from all parts of the system. This research seeks to provide the essential features required in order to understand the phenomenon of increase in precarity of employment in these health districts. [from abstract]

Scaling Up Health Service Delivery: from Pilot Innovations to Policies and Programs

This book considers the topic of scaling up with a focus on ways to increase the impact of health service innovations that have been tested in pilot or experimental projects so as to benefit more people and to foster policy and program development on a lasting, sustainable basis.

Chapter 8 of this book describes an innovative educational approach to capacity building and scaling up reproductive health services in Latin America. It explains how the capacity to provide innovative training was scaled up in public sector reproductive health services in Brazil, Bolivia and Chile. [from introd

Networking Collaboratively: the Brazilian Observatorio on Human Resources for Health

This case study looks at the contribution of the Observatório and its members to the development of the public health sector in Brazil. [from introduction]

Educating and Training Health Workforce to Consolidate a Universal Health System

This presentation was given at the First Forum on Human Resources for Health in Kampala. It discusses educational strategies for training health workers to scale up service delivery in Brazil.

Workplace Violence in the Health Sector Country Case Study: Brazil

The objective of the country case studies consists in showing country-specific evidence and practical solutions concerning workplace violence in the health sector. By summarising existing information and analysing newly obtained information the study aims to identify risk factors as well as best practices of anti-violence interventions in the given socio-cultural context. This work will serve as a basis for the formulation of guidelines for prevention and coping strategies targeting issues of workplace violence in the health sector. [author’s description]

Management and Leadership: Analysis of Nurse Manager's Knowledge

Nurses have assumed management positions in many health institutions. To properly accomplish the demands of this role, it is important that they be competent in both management and leadership. For appropriate performance, knowledge of management and supervision styles is a priority. Therefore, the goal of this investigation is to identify the nurse manager’s knowledge regarding management and leadership.

Quality and Effectiveness of Different Approaches to Primary Care Delivery in Brazil

Since 1994, Brazil has developed a primary care system based on multidisciplinary teams which include not only a physician and a nurse, but also 4-6 lay community health workers. Yet relatively few investigations have examined its effectiveness, especially in contrast with that of the traditional multi-specialty physician team approach it is replacing, or that of other existing family medicine approaches placing less emphasis on lay community health workers. The main objective of the study is to evaluate the quality of care offered to adults through different models of care currently present.