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This policy brief highlights results from unannounced visits made to a sample of public health facilities in Machakos District with the intention of documenting the proportion of critical health care workers who were absent from their stations of operation. It also presents policy options to address the problem of absenteeism of critical health providers in the health sector. [from author]

This document describes an approach to developing competencies that can guide interprofessional education and collaborative practice for all professions in a variety of contexts and is the first attempt to develop a Canadian model of interprofessional competencies that is applicable to all health professions. [from author]

Evidence indicates that lack of communication and collaboration between health providers can seriously harm patients. To solve these issues, we need to change how health services are delivered and how providers interact with each other. This project examined interprofessional interventions and how they impact the health workforce and workplace quality. [adapted from summary]

This report aims to outline the composition of the nursing workforce in Kenya, including recent trends and dynamics, and describes the involvement of stakeholders, both within and beyond Kenya, in the development of nursing and the nursing workforce. [from summary]

This short documentary film features struggles of health workers in both developed and developing countries. The film portrays a real-life journey of Dr Brian Kubwalo, a Malawian doctor working in Manchester, UK, who embarks on a personal quest to find out whether he should go back to his native Malawi, where his skills are sorely missed, or stay in Manchester, where he can provide better future for his children. [from publisher]

This policy brief provides new insights on recent migration trends for doctors and nurses up to 2008, and discusses the main causes and consequences for destination and origin countries. It presents possible policy responses stressing the importance of international co-operation to address the worldwide scarcity of health workers. [from author]

This study aimed to assess patient satisfaction with health care provider interactions and its influencing factors among out-patients at health centers in West Shoa, Central Ethiopia. [from abstract]

To confront the common problems in the management and development of human resources for health, the ministry has created policy guidelines for HRH and is defining the competency profiles of health personnel at different levels. This document outlines the process and lessons learned. [adapted from author]

Ethiopia’s health extension workers (HEW) deliver preventive interventions and treat childhood diarrhea and malaria, but not pneumonia. Most of Ethiopia’s annual estimated 4 million childhood pneumonia cases go untreated. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of volunteers in providing community case management for diarrhea, fever and pneumonia in a pre-HEW setting in Ethipia. [adapted from abstract]

This article aims at evaluating the traditional healers’ contribution as providers of care to HIV/AIDS patients and other chronically ill persons. [from abstract]

The aim of this article is to document the levels of HIV stigma reported by persons living with HIV infections and nurses in Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa, Swaziland and Tanzania. HIV stigma has been shown to negatively affect the quality of life for people living with HIV infection, their adherence to medication, and their access to care. Few studies have documented HIV stigma by association as experienced by nurses or other health care workers who care for people living with HIV infection. [from abstract]

This qualitative paper reports on the experience of three community health worker (CHW) supervisors who were responsible for supporting infant feeding peer counsellors. The findings highlight the complexities of supervising and supporting CHWs. [adapted from abstract]

This review shows how lessons that have been learned from international experiences have been improved further in China by realignment of the incentives for providers towards prevention and primary care, and incorporation of a treatment protocol for hospital services. [from summary]

Ensuring skilled attendant at birth is acknowledged as one of the most effective interventions to reduce maternal deaths. Exploring the potential of community-based interventions in increasing the utilization of obstetric care, the study aimed at developing, testing and assesses a community-based safe motherhood intervention in Mtwara rural District of Tanzania. [from abstract]

This report outlines a training program for health extension workers in long-acting family planning methods in Ethiopia.

India has the highest incidence of tuberculosis (TB) in the world. The Government’s TB programme uses Directly Observed Treatment Short course to supervise patients’ treatment. However an estimated 40-50 per cent of TB treatment is accessed through private pharmacists. A challenge is to engage these pharmacists in TB control. [from author]

The migration of health workers and pharmacists in particular is seen as a problem with no easy solution. It is not simply a matter of difference in salary, but also in training and career progression opportunities and a conducive practice environment. A comprehensive package which offers a range of incentives is the best way forward. [from author]

Lay or community workers can be a valuable resource in response to the human resource crisis in many low- and middle-income countries. Successful interventions by lay health workers have led to improvements in maternal and child health, including reductions in mortality and morbidity from common childhood illnesses, and effective support to people receiving treatment for tuberculosis. [from author]

In Indonesia, a bottom-up workforce planning tool used with health workers directly has changed practice, realigned health workers’ roles, and increased motivation among staff. It shows how effective empowerment can be in the workplace. Workload Indicators of Staffing Need, or WISN, is straightforward and easily applied. [from author]

Very few innovations look at providing services for health care workers and the creation of wellness centres is a real innovation. The centres have opened the door to improved retention practices, better health and an increased sense of being valued for African health workers, who toil daily on the front lines of the battle against HIV and AIDS, TB and other infectious diseases. [from author]

In Ghana, faith-based organisations play an essential role in providing health care services, especially in rural areas. For a variety of reasons, it can be difficult to retain health care workers, putting essential services under threat. The National Catholic Health Service carried out some vital research to find out how to address the problem. [from author]

A study across three countries to identify policies which would help recruit and retain health workers in rural areas revealed that there is a danger in one size fits all recommendations when it comes to designing human resource policies. Results also show that there is room for both financial and non-financial incentives in human resource interventions in developing countries. [from author]

Heads of pharmacy schools in Africa, as with all global regions, are facing educational challenges to meet local medicines needs, ranging from the physical infrastructure and laboratory teaching equipment to the world-wide shortage in academic capacity to fill teaching positions. Seven heads of pharmacy schools in Africa met recently to discuss how to tackle this situation in order to provide solutions from which the global educational infrastructure can learn. [from author]

Nowhere is the global health worker crisis more acute than in fragile states – those countries where the government cannot or will not deliver core functions to the majority of its people. Since the civil war, Liberia has an absolute shortage of health workers. Merlin is working with the government to help train health workers and rebuild the shattered health system. [from author]

Information and communication technology can play a vital role in training healthcare professionals, across the board - in nursing schools, medical schools, urban settings, and even in rural areas where it is often needed the most, in remote hospitals, health centers and dispensaries that are under-staffed and where the addressable population is scattered. [from author]

Task shifting, allowing lower-level healthcare providers to perform some of the tasks normally reserved for higher—evel providers, has been proposed as one way to overcome the health workforce shortage. Studies consistently show that task shifting in the provision of HIV services (such as distributing antiretroviral therapy) and other areas of healthcare can increase access, improve the coverage and quality of health services, and reduce the costs of providing services. [adapted form author]

Who will you need, when will you need them, can you afford them? This toolkit, recently developed for use in Liberia, can substantially assist the process. [from author]

Africa is in the grip of a medical crisis because its doctors are being lured away by lucrative jobs in Europe. This video reviews the situation in Malawi, which now only has one doctor for every 50,000 people. [from author]

Created by the Commonwealth Secretariat, this short film intertwines footage of health workers around the world and interviews taken from the September 2008 Council meeting in London, which was co-hosted by the Commonwealth Secretariat, to illustrate the work of the Council and others to manage the migration of health workers. [from author]

This systematic literature review covers the state of the evidence on task shifting, or delegating tasks performed by physicians to staff with lower-level qualifications, which is considered a means of expanding rollout of antiretroviral therapy in resource-poor or HRH-limited settings. [adapted from abstract]