Browse by Subject

This brief report describes four different accreditation programs in South Africa: one is nationwide and addresses hospitals; the second accredits privately financed healthcare programs; the third is a provincial program accrediting all public healthcare facilities, and the fourth assesses clinics providing adolescent reproductive health. This operations research study interviewed stakeholders of the South Africa healthcare system to elicit their views of the best possible options for South Africa and of the strengths and weaknesses of the four existing programs. [author’s description]

This study assessed the impact of management training in the performance of managers from agencies in Bangladesh delivering primary healthcare services. [from abstract]

The HRM-HIV Tool provides organizations with a participatory, rapid assessment tool for identifying an organization’s human resource management status and making concrete plans for improvements within HIV/AIDS environments. It has been used with both public and private organizations in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania. The tool conforms to principles of participation and self-determination that guide all of MSH’s training and technical assistance activities. [author’s description]

These briefs are primarily intended for directors and managers of community- based health care programmes—whether working within ministries of health, international donor agencies or non-government organizations. This brief takes up a number of likely questions about the management functions of the nurses in charge of small, local health facilities:

• How prepared are “nurses in charge” for carrying out administrative and management functions?
• How should they relate to the new management committees?
• What additional training do they need?
• What are the lessons from the Kwale project—lessons about the training of nurses—that can be applied elsewhere?
  

Zambia’s recently developed hospital accreditation program is a major component of ongoing health sector reforms that have taken place in the country during the last decade. Although Zambia previously had several processes in place for evaluating hospital performance, comprehensive performance standards had not been developed and quality measurement was not standardized.

This reference manual, part of a learning package developed through a collaboration between the World Health Organization and JHPIEGO, contains 12 modules on topics such as facilitating group learning, managing clinical practice, and preparing and using knowledge and skills assessments. The modules include examples related to maternal, reproductive and child health.

An editorial arguing for expanding the professional category of the formal health care workers to include home-based informal caregivers, political community leaders, shop vendors of health products, and traditional health practitioners. The editorial further notes that formal health workers can become informal health workers when operating outside the rules of the health system.

This issue of The Manager offers financial and program managers—from headquarters to the service delivery level - reasons to assess their financial management systems and a method for performing this assessment. It introduces FIMAT, the Financial Management Assessment Tool, a step-by-step process and instrument for rapidly assessing budgeting, accounting, purchasing and other financial systems. It describes how managers can use their assessment results to develop detailed action plans that can be incorporated into their organization’s annual operation plans. [from author]

The objective of this paper is to describe the numbers, characteristics, and trends in the migration to the United States of physicians trained in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Code develops a consensus approach to dealing with the problem of international recruitment of health workers, while remaining sensitive to the needs of recipient countries and the migratory rights of individual health professionals. The Code covers issues of transparency, fairness, mutuality of benefits, compensation/reparation/restitution, selection procedures, and registration. [Description from author]

Health services in the UK are benefiting from the collapse of health services in some of the poorest countries of the world due to the widespread and increasing migration of health professionals. Children in these countries are unable to obtain the most basic health services and many die as a consequence. Research summarised in this briefing reveals that current UK policy in this area is ineffective in tackling this inequality. Using Ghana as a case study, it sets out a range of practical suggestions for how the UK Government should respond. [From author]

This report presents findings from a nationwide Expenditure Tracking and Service Delivery Survey implemented in Mozambique between August and October 2002. The study focuses on the primary health care system, which is frequently the only source of health care for most Mozambicans. The report covers a broad set of issues, including institutional context, budget management, cost recovery, allocation and distribution of drugs, human resources, infrastructure and equipment, and service outputs. [from abstract]

This work intends to review the evidence on how the individual or collective actions of human resources are shaping reforms, by spotlighting the reform process, the workforce reactions and the factors determining successful human resources participation.

The Chinese government has found it impossible to maintain uniform pay levels, particularly in the face of a radical devolution of its own financial management. Health workers have increasingly resorted to informal methods of earning an income. The government considers this to be unprofessional behavior and has used a combination of moral pressure and loss of professional privileges to discourage it.

In recent months, the debate over foreign workers in the UK has become more heated. While the government argues that more foreign workers will raise growth, protectionists insist that foreign workers are robbing British citizens of jobs. A different question is also asked: how can Africa develop if the brightest and best are leaving? The debate runs a serious risk of trivialising what is a complex set of issues. [from author]

This paper looks at the successes and failures of today’s health care workforce. Hargadon and Plsek argue that our current solutions to the problems in the health workforce are insufficient. To overcome these insufficiencies, they believe that we need to better understand the complexities of the workforce. However, this is not an easy feat, because these problems challenge our traditional mental models of how things should work. [abstract]

The core objective of the plan is national, comprehensive treatment and care for HIV/AIDS with equal access to services, long-term commitment, improvement of Rwanda’s general health services infrastructure beyond HIV/AIDS, and financial transparency. The approach for implementation will involve service integration with existing health system infrastructure, community mobilization, linkage between treatment and care and prevention, multi-country procurement economies of scale, and rapid scale-up and iterative learning based on a collaboratives model.

Recruitment and retention of medical staff are important issues in rural health. The aim of this study was to describe and understand the perceptions of women doctors working in rural hospitals in South Africa about their work. [from abstract]

This article discusses the reasons that led health workers to oppose reform; the institutional and legal constraints to implementing reform as originally designed; the mismatch between the types of personnel needed for reform and the availability of professionals; the deficiencies of the reform implementation process; and the regulatory weaknesses of the region. The discussion presents workforce strategies that the reforms could have included to achieve the intended goals, and the need to take into account the values and political realities of the countries. [from abstract]

What makes one training experience better than another? Effective training can help providers of family planning/reproductive health (FP/RH) services to improve their performance. This handbook summarizes the tasks that should be completed at each stage of training to ensure an effective training course.

Despite the limited, but growing, evidence base on the impact of HRM on organisational performance in other sectors, there have been relatively few attempts to assess the implications of this evidence for the health sector. This paper examines this broader evidence base on HRM in other sectors and examines some of the underlying issues related to “good” HRM in the health sector. [from abstract]

The author argues that the migration of physicians and other trained health professionals undermines the ability of developing countries to meet agreed Millennium Development Goals and creates untenable health conditions for the poorer sections of their populations.

Over the last five years, international development organizations began to modify and adapt the conventional Performance Improvement Model for use in low-resource settings. This model outlines the five key factors believed to influence performance outcomes: job expectations, performance feedback, environment and tools, motivation and incentives, and knowledge and skills. This study presents a unique exploration of how the factors affect the performance of primary reproductive health providers (nurse-midwives) in two regions of Armenia. [from abstract]

The human capacity-building plan proposes a set of products and services supporting countries in their efforts to plan for, train and sustain the human capacity to achieve 3 by 5.

This issue shows how managing and leading can be practiced at the same time by managers at all levels. It discusses effective leadership values and practices that exist around the world. It explains how managers can, individually and together, undertake leadership development. [editors’ description]

This study investigated the uses of demographic census data for monitoring geographical imbalance in the health workforce for three developing countries, as a basis for formulation of evidence-based health policy options. [from abstract]

The overall aim of the workshop was to identify and agree on priorities for coordinated action in improving human resources for health (HRH) policy and practice, based on a timetable for strategic work involving the agreed participation of different stakeholders. Specific objectives were to improve the performance of health workers/health workforce by: improving understanding of the determinants of successful approaches to workforce development and HRH; developing strategies and the evidence base in relation to the first point; and achieving consensus among stakeholders on a strategy for research, development of knowledge tools, and implementation mechanisms for HRH.

The difficulty of ensuring an adequate and appropriate distribution of health services, together with increasing financial pressures in the public sector, are forcing many countries to consider using more rigorous methods for determining staffing levels in the health facilities. The Workload Indicators of Staffing Need (WISN) method is one such method. It uses a form of activity analysis (activity standards), together with measures of utilisation and workload to determine staffing requirements. The method provides a vehicle for assessing localised staffing needs that is believable and which at the same time is sharply different to historic methods.

A global review resulted from a study conducted by the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua) under contract to the World Health Organization. The first of this report’s three parts describes structures and activities at national and international levels around the world to promote quality in health care. The second part catalogues quality concepts and tools in local use in various countries. The third part outlines initiatives in health service accreditation and analyses the operation of functioning national programmes around the world. The appendices include recommendations of major international bodies and meetings on quality assurance.

Migration and remittances are of considerable importance in the small Pacific island states. There has been a significant migration of skilled health workers in recent decades to metropolitan fringe states, including Australia and New Zealand. This paper reports the findings of a re-analysis of a survey of Samoan and Tongan migrants in Australia where the sample is split between nurse households and others.