Browse by Geographic Focus

This paper reports pharmacists’ feedback as providers of a pharmacy asthma management service, a trial coordinated across four academic research centres in Australia. [from abstract]

This study attempted to determining personnel’s acceptance of the surgical safety checklist, which reflects their intention to use the checklist, as well as their awareness and knowledge of the checklist which assesses the effectiveness of the training process. [adapted from abstract]

This paper examines the differences in the demographic characteristics, smear grades, and treatment outcomes of pulmonary tuberculosis cases detected through both active and passive case finding to determine if active case finding from health workers in mobile radiography units could contribute to early case finding, considering associated project costs. [adapted from author]

The goal of this study was to explore the factors associated with the burnout syndrome in Cypriot nurses working in various clinical departments. [from abstract]

This study examined inter-personal, intra-personal and extra-personal factors that influence job satisfaction among rural primary care nurses in a low and middle income country, Papua New Guinea. [from abstract]

This article describes a task shifing intervention in Malawi where a cadre of expert patients was trained to assist with some of the clinical tasks of antiretroviral (ART) services as a way to fill the gap in the availability of health workers. [adapted from author]

This presentation outlines the status of all level of human resources for health in India and the importance of HRH to service delivery.

This presentation outlines two studies concerning the recruitment and retention of health workers in underserved areas. [adapted from author]

This study focused on the causes of absenteeism among doctors and paramedical staff in primary health care centres in Karnataka and loss of resources due to absenteeism and related issues, with a view to suggest ways and means of reducing absenteeism and maximising impact on the utilisation of public resources. [from summary]

Areas of the Vietnam still experience severe shortages of health workers for reproductive health, particularly mountainous and other remote areas populated by ethnic minorities. This case study evaluates a program to lower maternal mortality rates and encourage healthier births in these areas through an 18 month training for ethic minority midwives. [adapted from author]

In response the lack of sufficient human resources for health and the skewed geographic availability of medical personnel, the Apollo Hospital Group adopted telemedicine as the most effective way to accellerate the bridging of the demand supply gap without physically shifting resources. This case study examines the network and its processes. [adapted from author]

This case study reports on how the Institute for Rural Health Studies has managed to provide seamless access to healthcare for thousands of people throughout the state of Andhra Pradesh through both rural clinics and its related programs in the city’s bus station connecting to a network of patient counselors in government hospitals. [from author]

This case study highlights the efficiency with which the Community Health and Development (CHAD) program of the Christian Medical College, Vellore has obtained results through a combination of community-based provider training and innovative community service delivery methodologies, as well as discuss how aspects of the model can be adopted by other institutions to achieve similar results. [adapted from author]

This case study has studied the service delivery model of Kollyani, worked with the remote villages of the Bandarban district to create primary health centers where previously the area had none. Utilizing the local people and resources, they were able to create six local clinics run by trained villagers. The study examines the inputs invested and the outcomes produced in terms of health and social development and the issue of sustainability. [adapted from publisher]

The objective of this study was to identify and characterize contracting models that have existed in the Zambian health sector and their consequences on access to health care. The study was aimed at assessing the extent to which the identified contracting models have been successful in achieving their intended goals and at determining their potential to be scaled up to the entire health sector, including the private sector. [from summary]

The objective of the study defined in this report was to evolve a community-based model of monitoring absenteeism in public health centres that can induce demand accountability of service providers, along with measuring the rate of their absenteeism and the satisfaction of the beneficiaries, and to do evidence-based advocacy for adopting the model and improving the service delivery. [from abstract]

This 8 minute video highlights one solution to the problem of doctor absenteeism being deployed in the Karnataka region in southern India. When patients arrive at a primary health clinic and the doctor is absent, they can use their phones to text a central location which will record this data to allow the government to track and citizens to see which clinics are chronically understaffed. [from publisher]

The objective of this study is to characterize physician perceptions of pharmacists and their roles in a primary care patient setting in Qatar. [from abstract]

This study sought to understand what the field of mHealth had to offer, to explore how mHealth is implemented in practice and to use these two sources of information to reflect on the lessons and implications for implementing mHealth at scale for monitoring and evaluation of community based services and community health workers. [adapted from summary]

Many countries are facing an ageing of the nursing workforce and increasing workforce shortages. This article reports findings from a qualitative study of 15 participants who explored perceived opportunities for and barriers to implementing flexible strategies to engage older nurses in the workforce after they resign from full-time work. [adapted from abstract}

Medical student education is perceived as utilising significant amounts of preceptors’ time, negatively impacting on clinical productivity. This study triangulated practice financial data with the perspectives of clinical supervisors before and after regional/rural longitudinal integrated community-based placements of medical students to determine at what point students become financially beneficial to a practice. [adapted from abstract]

Studies have suggested that a rapid increase in physicians does not necessarily change an urban–rural inequity in their distribution. This study applied spatial competition and attraction–repulsion hypotheses to the geographic distribution of physicians during a time of insufficient physician supply in Japan to determine whether an insufficient supply of physicians worsens an inequity. [adapted from abstract]

This article identifies trends in the evolving practice of rural paramedics and describes key characteristics, roles and expected outcomes for a rural expanded scope of practice model. The study found that paramedics are increasingly becoming first line primary healthcare providers in small rural communities and developing additional professional responsibilities throughout the cycle of care. [from abstract]

This book presents the principal findings of a study on contractual arrangements between faith-based hospitals and public health authorities in four sub-Saharan African countries.

This edition of Hotline, an HRH newletter focused on the needs of faith-based organizations (FBOs) in Africa, highlights resources, trainings and workshops, articles of interest and other information for FBO HRH pracitioners.

Lebanon is witnessing an increased emigration of physicians. The objective of this study was to understand the perceptions of Lebanese policymakers of this emigration, and elicit their proposals for future policies and strategies to deal with this emigration. [from abstract]

This paper presents a case study of a multi-component school health promotion intervention in India that was delivered by lay school health counsellors, who possessed neither formal educational nor health provider qualifications. [from abstract]

This study aimed to investigate the association between cancer surgical outcomes and physician/nurse staffing in relation to hospital volume. [from abstract]

This article describes a methodology developed to establish tuberculosis (TB) related work load in a given context and for a given patient load for use by TB program managers and health planners. The authors piloted this methodology in Tanzania in three districts; one rural, one urban and one semi-urban district as the countrycurrently faces a health workforce shortage of 65% in the public sector and 86% in the private sector, with unequal distribution between urban and rural areas. [adapted from author]

The government of Pakistan identified 4 medical colleges for the introduction of a new medical curriculum, but despite concerted efforts, it was not implemented. The purpose of this research was to identify the barriers and reasons for delay in implementation of the curriculum and to assess the understanding of the stakeholders. [adapted from abstract]