Pre-Service Education

This meeting discussed the role of medical schools in the process of development and implementation for national health policies and plans, the need for medical education reforms to respond to national health challenges within the context of global and regional health strategies, the way forward for enhancing the capacity of medical schools to produce adequate human resources for health, and the formulation of recommendations for regular institutional evaluation. [adapted from executive summary]

The Health Sector Strategic Plan (HSSP) aims to ensure access to basic health care by the Ugandan population. This requires availability of well-trained health professionals. This study demonstrates that the Private-Not-For-Profit Health Training Institutions - the majority in Uganda - have remained grossly under-funded, which poses a threat to achievement of the HSSP. It is recommended that government increases and guarantees its support to these Health Training Institutions as a way of maintaining quality of health worker training. [from abstract]

As part of the process to develop more community-oriented medical teaching in Vietnam, eight medical schools prepared a set of standard learning objectives with attention to the needs of a doctor working with the community. Because they were prepared based on government documents and the opinions of the teachers, it was necessary to check them with doctors who had already graduated and were working at different sites in the community. [abstract]

Malawi has a critical human resources problem particularly in the health sector. The College of Medicine (COM)is the only medical school. For senior staff it heavily depends on expatriates. We explore to what extent a brain drain took place among the COM graduates by investigating their professional development and geographical distribution.

This paper describes the socio-economic profile of medical students in the 1998/99 academic year at the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) Medical Faculty in Maputo. It aims to identify their social and geographical origins in addition to their expectations and difficulties regarding their education and professional future. [from abstract]

This paper focuses on the scheme by the Malawi Ministry of Health (MOH) to retain nurse tutors in collaboration with the Christian Health Association of Malawi (CHAM). It chronicles the scheme’s successful elements for purposes of eventual replication, suggests how to address some of the challenges and identifies effective incentives, including salary supplements. [from executive summary]

This Royal College of Nursing (RCN) publication is designed to assist you in your role as a mentor to pre-registration nursing and midwifery students. It outlines your responsibilities alongside those of the student, higher education institutions (HEIs) and placement providers. [introduction]

Human resources for health are non-existent in many parts of the world and the outer islands of Marshall Islands in Micronesia are prime examples. While the more populated islands with hospital facilities are often successful in recruiting qualified health professionals from overseas, the outer islands generally have very limited health resources, and are thus less successful. In an attempt to provide reasonable health services to these islands, indigenous people were trained as Health Assistants (HA) to service their local communities.

Universal Basic Precautions (UBP) are not well understood nor implemented by health professionals, though crucial in HIV/AIDS prevention. UBP refers to the prevention of transmission of blood borne pathogens like HIV through strict respect by health workers of rules concerning care and nursing. The objectives of this study were to find out knowledge and attitudes of medical personnel doctors in the Department of Surgery of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital to HIV transmission and to find out their current practices of UBP in surgery.

The purpose of this technical effort by the Partnerships for Health Reform was to assess various issues, problems, and opportunities facing the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) in Zambia. This review serves to catalyze and provide input for the development of an effective strategic plan for the UTH and Zambia’s health services in general. Findings from this review provide a basis for recommendations on how to effectively address these issues in order to improve management and, ultimately, positively affect efficiency, quality, equity, and sustainability of services. [from abstract]

The main objective of this study was to determine the perceptions of Iranian nurse educators and students regarding the evaluation of teaching effectiveness in university-based programs. [from abstract]

The World Federation for Medical Education (WFME) Working Party applied the principles which were developed regarding basic medical education to postgraduate medical education. Attention was focused on the general application of guidelines in quality development of medical education. WFME holds that the set of international standards presented can be used globally as a tool for quality assurance and development of postgraduate medical education. [from introduction]

A central part of the World Federation for Medical Education strategy is to give priority to specification of international standards and guidelines for medical education, comprising both institutions and their educational programmes. Adoption of international standards will constitute a new framework for medical schools to measure themselves. Furthermore, internationally accepted standards could be used as a basis for national and regional recognition and accreditation of medical schools’ educational programs. [from introduction]

This report documents the efforts of the Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) to integrate natural family planning methods into the health delivery system in the Phillipines. It discusses the venues used for implementation such as government and NGO partnerships as well as IRH’s training resources and activities for nurses and midwives on family planning. Finally, the report details best practices and lessons learned from the multi-year project.

There is growing interest in the migration of doctors from Africa to developed nations. Little attention has been made in understanding the flow of doctors into African countries. The objective of this article is to describe the nationality, country of primary qualification as a doctor and specialties of doctors registered in Malawi in 2003. [from abstract]

This issue of the HST Update contains articles on: overview of nursing in South Africa, transforming nursing education towards primary health care, problems in nursing today, nursing summit charters a way forward, placement of nurses, nurse training in Mount Frere health district, and the quest for rational drug use.

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]

This paper discusses human capital outflow from Africa from a developmental perspective. The focus is on the high skill content of African emigration to industrial countries, its impact on development in the region, and the challenges faced by institutions of higher learning to help the region deal with this problem. This paper further takes up the issue of African brain drain in the context of relevant changes taking place globally: globalization, movement towards a knowledge-based economy, and global demographic trends. [adapted from author]

Past attempts to estimate the cost of migration were limited to education costs only and did not include the lost returns from investment. The objectives of this study were: (i) to estimate the financial cost of emigration of Kenyan doctors to the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA); (ii) to estimate the financial cost of emigration of nurses to seven OECD countries (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Portugal, UK, USA); and (iii) to describe other losses from brain drain. [author’s description]

JHPIEGO has been working since 1991 to support the development of a national integrated clinical training system used for both family planning/reproductive health (FP/RH) preservice education and inservice training in Turkey.

JHPIEGO’s strategies for strengthening Ghanaian preservice education in family planning/reproductive health and essential maternal and neonatal care have included: developing and implementing a standardized, competency-based curriculum; improving knowledge and skills of tutors and clinical trainers/preceptors; reinforcing service delivery sites used for clinical practice; and providing schools and clinical training sites with anatomic models and supporting training materials. [adapted from author]

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]

The goal of this paper is to describe the establishment of a self-sustaining Student Learning Center (SLC) employing humanistic anatomical models to aid in the teaching of family planning and reproductive health clinical skills to nursing students in Nepal.

This paper examines various aspects of the nursing and midwifery workforce in Africa, looking at education and supply systems; recruitment, retention and motivation and career systems. It further investigates attrition from migration and HIV/AIDS, as well as other factors and makes some recommendations on how to move forward using examples of experiences from countries. These experiences, albeit on a small scale, show promise of good results after being scaled up. [author’s description]

Human resources become increasingly relevant in this context. Health human resource (HHR) is currently experiencing a three-fold problem, which encompasses old issues, together with the effects of reform, and the consequences of globalisation. This includes the workforce crisis in nursing which, facing all kinds of difficulties, requires complex in-depth analysis, synergies and alliances in order to ensure quality nursing services.

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]

Most human resources for health in developing countries are produced by highly subsidized public institutes. Due to inequity in basic education most health science students are from wealthier urban families. They tend to remain in urban areas after graduation, creating inequitable distribution of health personnel. At the same time the public education institutes are subject to strong bureaucratic inefficiency and usually no systematic quality control system. This paper analyses this situation in Thailand. [adapted from abstract]

Academic medicine has the opportunity to improve the quantity and quality of the health workforce as a means of strengthening the broader health system. However, it must address the gender dimensions of enrollment, curriculum, and promotion to have a positive impact on human resources for health around the world. [author’s description]

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.