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Referrals for Positive Tuberculin Tests in New Health Care Workers and Students: a Retrospective Cohort Study

Documentation of test results for latent tuberculosis infection is important for health care workers and students before they begin work. A negative result provides a baseline for comparison with future tests. A positive result affords a potential opportunity for treatment of latent infection when appropriate. This study sought to evaluate the yield of the referral process for positive baseline tuberculin tests, among persons beginning health care work or studies. [from abstract]

Who Goes Where and Why? Examining HIV Counseling and Testing Services in the Public and Private Sectors in Zambia

The objectives of this study include documenting the role of the private for-profit sector in voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) service delivery; establishing whether there are significant differences in the quality of VCT services, particularly in counseling and referral practices, between public, private for-profit, NGO, and mission providers; measuring key VCT service statistics at facilities within each sector; and identify best practices from each sector. [adapted from introduction]

Finding Middle Ground: Making Better Use of the African Private Health Sector through More Effective Regulations

This report highlights how changes in the legal and regulatory environment can facilitate expanded access to family planning and reproductive health services through Africa’s private health sector. Using laws and regulations from three Africa countries - Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria - this report presents a road map on how to review the most important laws governing the private sector, as well as key issues to assess. [from introduction]

Employment Integration of Nursing Graduates: Evaluation of a Provincial Policy Strategy Nursing Graduate Guarantee 2008-2009

This report presents the results of an evaluation of the Ontario provincial strategy for hiring new graduates, the Nursing Graduate Guarantee, for the year 2008-2009. [from summary]

Strategies to Advance 70% Full-Time Nurse Employment Toolkit

This toolkit was designed for nurse employers across the province of Ontario to use as a resource in working toward the 70% full-time nurse commitment. It is a practical guide to assist Nurse Managers and Human Resource Staff in identifying staffing needs and creating organization-specific strategies to increase full-time employment for nurses. [from author]

Integrating Internationally Educated Health Care Professionals into the Ontario Workforce

The purpose of this report is to provide background information to support the development of guidelines for the integration of internationally educated health professionals into the Ontario workplace. [from summary]

From Staff Mix to Skill Mix and Beyond: Towards a Systemic Approach to Health Workforce Management

This review describes evidence about the benefits and pitfalls of current approaches to human resources optimisation in health care. It concludes that in order to use human resources most effectively, health care organisations must consider a more systemic approach - one that accounts for factors beyond narrowly defined human resources management practices and includes organisational and institutional conditions. [from abstract]

Impact of HIV Scale-Up on the Role of Nurses in South Africa: Time for a New Approach

HIV scale-up has triggered innovations in nurse training, task shifting, retention, and scope of practice that need not remain HIV specific. Lessons learned in the context of HIV have the potential to enhance nursing practice and human resources for health more generally, strengthening South Africa’s health systems and improving access to effective health services. [from abstract]

Using HIS/GIS Data and Tools to Improve Resource Allocation: the Yemen Experience

This presentation for the APHA Annual Meeting illustrates the use of geographic and health information systems to identify gaps in service delivery and vaccination coverage in Yemen in order to assign human and technical resources.

Using Organizational Development Approaches to Strengthen Health Information Systems

This concept paper summarizes an approach based on the principles of organizational development that is aimed at complementing health information systems (HIS) strengthening efforts to make them more effective. [from summary]

Observer Program: Insights from International Medical Graduates

This paper presents the findings of qualitative research documenting the participant experiences in the Observer Program, a hospital-based pre-employment program for international medical graduates entering the Australian healthcare system. [adapted from author]

Partnerships with the Private Sector in Health: What the International Community Can Do to Strengthen Health Systems in Developing Countries

The report is the culmination of a work group tasked with exploring practical and feasible ways for donors and technical agencies to support improvements in public-private interaction in developing countries as a means to accelerate the achievement of widely agreed-upon social objectives: reduced mortality and expanded and more equitable access to health services and essential medicines and products. [from author]

Interaction of Continuing Professional Development, Organisational Culture and Performance in Health Service Organisations: A Concept Paper

The paper aims to provide a framework that can be used to analyse the interplay between continuing professional development (CPD), organisational culture and performance. It is argued that for CPD to support performance there is need for a culture that is adaptive and receptive to learning, change, innovation and performance improvement. [from abstract]

Outcomes of Community Health Worker Interventions

The objective of this document was to conduct a systematic review of the evidence on characteristics of community health workers (CHWs) and CHW interventions, outcomes of such interventions, costs and cost-effectiveness of CHW interventions, and characteristics of CHW training. [from abstract]

Role of Health Systems Strengthening in Effectively Updating and Disseminating Family Planning/Reproductive Health Guidelines

This paper supports the promotion of appropriate standards and practices to ensure quality in FP/RH services at the local level. It argues that investments in written updates of FP/RH norms and standards and their dissemination must be complemented with innovative organizational and management systems strengthening to ensure their use in low-resource settings. [adapted from introduction]

Implementation of Performance Support Approaches in Central America and Uganda

The Capacity Project worked with governments and partners in Central America and Uganda to test approaches for strengthening supervision systems in the health sector, as one component of the Project’s workforce performance support strengthening. [from summary]

Action Now on the Tanzanian Health Worker Crisis: Expanding Health Worker Training the Twiga Initiative

Recognizing the need to focus on health worker supply in order to achieve progress on health indicators, the Ministry of Health in Tanzania developed the Twiga Initiative to strengthen health workforce production through. This document outlines the steps taken to improve health worker training and institutions and the challenges involved. [adapted from author]

We Shall Travel on: Quality of Care, Economic Development, and the International Migration of Long-Term Care Workers

This report examines demographic, social, and political factors driving the increased international migration of workers to provide long-term care services in developed countries. [from introduction]

Effectiveness of Computerized Clinical Guidelines in the Process of Care: a Systematic Review

Clinical practice guidelines have been developed aiming to improve the quality of care. The implementation of the computerized clinical guidelines (CCG) has been supported by the development of computerized clinical decision support systems. This systematic review assesses the impact of CCG on the process of care compared with non-computerized clinical guidelines. [from abstract]

Curriculum to Teach Medical Students to Care for People with Disabilities: Development and Initial Implementation

The objective of this paper is to describe the development and initial implementation of a curriculum for teaching medical students to care for patients with disabilities. [from abstract]

Planning the Development of Human Resources for Health for Implementation of the Stop TB Strategy: a Handbook

This handbook provides background information on the current workforce situation in the health sector and summarizes the issues and challenges; introduces the HRH Action Framework and the Stop TB (tuberculosis) Strategy; applies the Framework to human resource development (HRD) for comprehensive TB control; describes how to prepare a strategic plan for HRD in support of comprehensive TB control; and gives a step-by-step guide on how to develop HRD plans based on the structures and processes described. [adapted from introduction]

Effectiveness of a Training Programme to Improve Hand Hygiene Compliance in Primary Healthcare

The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of a training program on hand hygiene for the reduction of healthcare-associated infections for primary healthcare workers. [adapted from author]

Macroeconomic and Fiscal Issues in Scaling Up Human Resources for Health in Low-Income Countries

This background paper to the World Health Report 2006 discusses the fiscal and macroeconomic implications associated with scaling up health workforce capacity. While these general issues and concepts are relevant in all setting, the focus of the discussion is on low-income countries and sub-Saharan Africa in particular. [from publisher]

Inequality in Access to Human Resources for Health: Measurement Issues

This background paper to the World Health Report 2006 discusses the various options to allow comparative analysis of inequalities in the distribution of health workers across and within countries, using a single summary measure of this distribution. The paper first presents the scale problem of various inequality indices, then tests how sensitive a simple ratio measure of the distribution of health workers is to changes in scale.

Will There Be Enough People to Care? Notes on Workforce Implications of Demographic Change 2005-2050

This background paper to the World Health Report 2006 aims to calculate the workforce implications of demographic changes by projecting future health workforces for developed economies, including Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the United States of America and Canada. [from publisher]

Estimating Inflows and Outflows of Health Service Providers in Sub-Saharan Africa

This background study to the World Health Report 2006 is an attempt to provide a preliminary analysis of inflow and outflow patterns of health service providers in sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis is limited only to three types of health workers—doctors, nurses and midwives—and to countries in the region with critical shortages of health workers. [from publisher]

Measuring Expenditure for the Health Workforce: Evidence and Challenges

Managing health workforce expenditure requires the generation of evidence in order to support informed policy decisions. This background paper for the World Health Report 2006 takes a step forward in exploring HRH expenditures and presents the results of a first measurement for the health workforce in WHO Member States in the years 1998–2003. [from publisher]

Health Workers Wages: an Overview from Selected Countries

The overall objective of this background paper for the World Health Report 2006 is to describe variations in health worker wages across countries. However, where data are available, the authors explore variations within countries between health workers and comparable professionals. The main issues of standardization and comparability are discussed. The results are a first attempt to understand the nature of the variability of wages across settings. [from publisher]

Counting Health Workers: Definitions, Data, Methods and Global Results

This background paper to the World Health Report 2006 describes the approaches followed in assembling the global database as well as some preliminary analysis of the content of the source data. The broad picture of health workers worldwide is examined and some useful strategies for improving health workforce statistics are highlighted. [from publisher]

Combining a Leadership Course and Multi-Source Feedback Has No Effect on Leadership Skills of Leaders in Postgraduate Medical Education

Leadership courses and multi-source feedback are widely used developmental tools for leaders in health care. The authors aimed to study the additional effect of a leadership course following a multi-source feedback procedure compared to multi-source feedback alone especially regarding development of leadership skills over time. [from abstract]