Education and Training

The objective of this study was to assess whether adding a training intervention for clinic staff to the usual DOTS strategy (the internationally recommended control strategy for tuberculosis (TB)) would affect the outcomes of TB treatement in primary care clinics with treatemet success rates below 70%. [from abstract]

This manual was developed to help organizations who provide reproductive health services through the community-based distribution approach to train their community health workers in reproductive health.

A tool designed to help program and training managers, curriculum designers and trainers facilitate the operationalization and assessment of gender sensitivity during pre- and in-service training of service providers.

The guides in this toolkit are intented to be used to facilitate a broad discussion of the elements and conditions that underpin the concept of informed and voluntary decision making, help users assess the status of sexual reproductive health decision making in a given program by identifying the challenges and supporting factors at the individual/community, service-deliver, and policy levels, and to help users plan strategies to strengthen supports for clients’ reproductive health decision making.

This handbook explains why a gender and human rights strategy is a better approach for achieving results in curbing the HIV/AIDS epidemic It also shows you how to do it by providing the necessary information and techniques for incorporating gender and human rights into HIV/AIDS training. [from introduction]

This presentation was given as part of the Christian Health Association’s Conference: CHAs at a Crossroad Towards Achieving Health Millennium Development Goals. It provides an excellent overview of the challenges of Malaria and HIV/AIDS ; discusses the human resource needs in light of these challenges; and how to build and maintain capacity. [from author’s description]

This manual presents Learning for Performance, a systematic instructional design process based on IntraHealth’s experience in designing reproductive health and HIV/AIDS training and performance improvement programs over the last 27 years in countries around the world. The manual and accompanying tools help connect learning to specific job responsibilities and competencies. To facilitate use and adaptation of the 14 Learning for Performance tools in the manual, Microsoft Word versions of the tools are available for downloading. [adapted from publisher]

Training managers within hospitals and health services do not just rely on transmitting packets of knowledge in a formal setting. This article argues that successful training should contain an emotional element to ensure engagement with the message. Immersion in real life circumstances is also important and leaders must develop training around shared objectives and team building. [abstract]

This article outlines the development and content of a community-based research capacity building framework for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workers. The focus is on the major issues that enhance a proactive service delivery model using culturally appropriate research methods. The overall aim of the framework is to supplement current institutionally-based education and training resources for health workers with community-based research training modules. These modules can be tailored to provide research and evaluation skills relevant to health workers taking a more proactive role in facilitating health and wellbeing programs in their own communities.

Many women choose to use traditional birth attendants in Guatemala to deliver their babies - a fact that can’t be ignored, according to local public-health officials. They hope a new culturally sensitive approach to training traditional birth attendants will help improve their quality of care and save lives. [adapted from author]

This [training] guide considers the constraints to protecting privacy in low-resource settings and provides an evidence-based rationale that services will be more effective if resources are invested in ensuring the privacy rights of clients. [This guide] is designed to enable clinic staff, service providers, and supervisors to better support and protect the right of clients to privacy and confidentiality.

The objective of this study was to examine associations between management training of physician executives and their leadership styles, as well as effectiveness in achieving disease management goals. [author’s description]

This cost analysis is based on QAP research on the effectiveness of two interventions (self-assessment and peer review) in sustaining or increasing the effectiveness of interpersonal communications training that midwives had taken. The research had measured the effectiveness of the interventions in terms of the number of utterances midwives made during family planning consultations, and this case study followed on, measuring the cost of each intervention in terms of the number of utterances generated.

This manual provides useful information to help the trainer conduct a training program in the client-centered approach to reproductive health. In addition to the modules covering the step-by-step activities that will help participants master different concepts, the information presented ranges from a practical listing of the tools required to short presentations on topics that the trainer will want to be familiar with during the training. [from introduction]

These reports review Rwanda’s healthcare staffing, documents practices and levels of effort in providing HIV/AIDS services, and calculates staffing needs for scale-up. It also discusses such issues as training, management, supervision, job satisfaction, and staff motivation and incentives. [publisher’s description]

AIDS-related stigma and discrimination is a pervasive problem worldwide. People living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) in India, as elsewhere, face stigma and discrimination in a variety of contexts, including the household, community, workplace, and health care setting. Research in India has shown that stigma and discrimination against HIV-positive people and those perceived to be infected are common in hospitals and act as barriers to seeking and receiving critical treatment and care services (UNAIDS 2001). Recognizing the need to move beyond documentation of the problem, three New Delhi hospitals; SHARAN, an Indian NGO; and the Horizons Program, with support from the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), carried out an operations research project to develop and test responses to hospital-based stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS.

Stronger pre-service education and in-service training systems for health workers are essential to meet the increasing need for quality services. To support efforts to improve health worker education and training systems, the Capacity Project has assembled a collection of resources that can be used for reference and adaptation. While the Capacity Project does not endorse any particular document or approach represented in these resources, they were selected by Project staff with expertise in the content areas. [author’s description]

The involvement of district-level workers in local-level practical approaches to mainstreaming gender is central to facilitating change and informing health strategies. There are very few practical examples of mainstreaming gender in health, especially at the lower levels of the health sector. One approach is to build the capacity of staff to conduct and respond to gender analysis. [author’s description]

Training and innovative tools were key to the success of the Tanzania Essential Health Interventions Project, along with small funding increases. The tools and strategies allowed the districts of Rufiji and Morogoro to target their new resources on the largest contributors to the burden of disease and on health care delivery. The most dramatic result, among many, has been an average decline in child mortality of more than 40%. [from author]

This checklist is designed to be completed by clinical trainers preparing for clinical training courses. It covers the areas of Participant Selection and Management, Classroom Logistics, Clinic Logistics, and Classroom Preparation/ Management.

This newsletter concentrates on planning, preparing, delivering and reviewing training sessions designed for employees like health workers.

A comparison showed that two models for teaching maternal care skills to providers resulted in similarly modest improvements in knowledge and performance. However, maternal care skills remained weak overall. Training should incorporate the best elements of the two approaches while seeking improvements in basic knowledge of maternal care. [author’s description]

The maintenance of competence by rural district hospital medical practitioners is a challenge faced by all countries and, most acutely, by resource-poor nations. It is a vital element in addressing the disparity between rural and urban health care in South Africa. The aim of this study was to define expert consensus on the content and methods most suitable for the maintenance of competence by rural district hospital practitioners in the Western Cape province of South Africa. [author’s description]

Beginning in 1992, JHPIEGO worked in close collaboration with the Bolivia Ministry of Health (MOH) to develop an integrated family planning/reproductive health (FP/RH) training network throughout the country. The focus of the assistance was the establishment of nine national training centers (NTCs) for inservice training conducted by physician-nurse teams and located at departmental maternity hospitals in departmental capitals. By 2000, the government of Bolivia and other stakeholders had shifted the training emphasis to preservice education efforts.

During the past several years there has been a global trend in business and industry to move from training to performance improvement. This paper presents a review of selected performance improvement and training literature that has been helpful to JHPIEGO in identifying issues related to this trend and in shaping our performance improvement strategy. [author’s description]

Using the training needs projection methods in the Spectrum Policy Modeling System software module ProTrain, this report estimates the numbers of family planning/reproductive health service providers needed to reach total fertility rate and contraceptive prevalence goals for Malawi from 2001-2007. [adapted from publisher]

This literature review provides a short summary on some specified features of the training systems which are in place in developing countries (mainly low income Africa and Asia) which supply key workers into the health and education sectors. [author’s description]

This paper aims to provide an overview of the current evidence and opinion of the workforce implications of regulation, competency development and role definition. These three elements are inextricably linked to each other and are fundamental to the practice of nursing in today’s environment. [from introduction]

Tools to assist primary providers and their managers in assessing, monitoring and improving the gender sensitivity of family planning and reproductive health services on an ongoing basis. [publisher’s description]

Health workers play a key role in screening for and treating the consequences of gender-based violence, and female health workers may themselves experience GBV, compromising their ability to work. Training health workers to identify, treat and respond effectively to GBV is essential for the health sector and the communities that health workers serve. The Capacity Project conducted a search of existing training modules and training support materials on GBV, particularly those intended for health care personnel. The purpose of this activity was to identify and review existing GBV training modules that could be adapted and/or integrated into pre-service education or in-service training curricula in developing countries. [adapted from author]