East Asia & Pacific

This article evaluates an Australian program that placed students from different health programs together, in a rural environment, for one or two semesters of the academic year to promote interprofessional learning. [adapted from abstract]

A recent report about the future of nursing highlights the areas where nurses can serve, contribute, and move forward to improve health care in the United States. The purpose of this paper demonstrate that the report’s recommendations could have implications for the future of nursing outside of the United States, particularly for nurses taking leadership in designing care for the rapidly aging society of Japan. [adapted from abstract]

The purpose of this study was to describe outcome indicators of nursing education including critical thinking, professionalism, leadership, and communication and to evaluate differences among nursing programs and academic years. [from abstract]

The authors evaluate Autstralia’s Practice Incentives Program which aims to encourage continuing improvements in general practice through financial incentives to support quality care, and improve access and health outcomes for patients. [from introduction]

This report outlines and evaluates a pay-for-performance program designed to strengthen the role of primary health organizations to focus on population health and health inequality programs, and to address problems of service access and lack of coordination between providers. [adapted from introduction]

This report examines international and internal migration of skilled health workers (SHW) from six Pacific Island countries (Cook Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu) to review recent data and research concerned with migration of SHWs and to present estimates of the numbers of SHWs from the selected countries who were working within the health sector of an overseas country around the year 2000. [adapted from summary]

This study gathered information on adolescent sexual and reproductive services and educati on provision in the Solomon Islands and explored ways in which collaboration between the health, education and youth sectors could be feasibly enhanced. [from summary]

This study sought to characterise the allied health professional (AHP) workforce of the Northern Territory, Australia, in order to understand the influence of student supervision on workload, job satisfaction, and recruitment and retention. [from abstract]

The purpose of this study was to investigate anxiety symptoms and the associated factors in Chinese nurses working in public city hospitals. [from abstract]

The objective of this study was to understand the influence of the number of years spent at an Australian rural clinical school on graduates’ current, preferred current and intended location for rural workforce practice. [from abstract]

The purposes of this study were to describe the prevalence of health promotion volunteers (HPVs) with differing levels of activity satisfaction and burden; examine the association between satisfaction and burden with activity involvement and persistence, and life satisfaction; and explore associated factors by satisfaction/burden levels among Japanese HPVs. [from abstract]

The negative impact of gender wage differentials is the disincentive to work more hours. This implies a substantial cost on the Australian health sector. This study aimed to identify the magnitude of gender wage differentials within the health sector. [from abstract]

This study forecasts physician supply between 2012 and 2030 using cohort analysis, based on future production capacity and losses from the profession, and assesses if, and by when, the projected numbers of physicians would meet the targets of one doctor per 1,500 population. [from abstract]

This study explores the views and attitudes of health providers in Malaysia towards intimate partner violence and abused women and considers whether and how their views affect the provision or quality of services. [from abstract]

With interest in male circumcision (MC) as an HIV prevention option, this study explored the perceptions and motivations of health workers involved in sexual and reproductive health services, examining their implications for the possible future roll out of a national MC program. [adapted from abstract]

This study examines the effects of implementing national health insurance on the problem of geographic maldistribution of health providers in Taiwan. [from abstract]

This study assessed the effectiveness of a neonatal resuscitation training workshop for final-year medical students in Malaysia in improving knowledge immediately post-training and at the end of the year. [adapted from abstract]

This study found that intersectoral collaboration would ensure effiecient use of current health care workforce to improve the provision of health services and information to adolescents. [adapted from author]

This study used covert observers to determine health worker adherence to hand hygiene compliance for hospital infection control.

This article describes a model for interprofessional learning developed to address the barriers related to the delivery of interprofessional education in the rural health setting in Australia across a number of health disciplines. [adapted from abstract]

This study measured job satisfaction and determined associated factors among health workers in 38 commune health stations in an urban district and a rural district of Hanoi, Vietnam. [from abstract]

Policy initiatives to improve retention of the rural health workforce have relied primarily on evidence for rural doctors, most of whom practice under a private business model. Much of the literature for rural allied health (AH) workforce focuses on the public sector. This study explores sector differences in factors affecting retention of rural AH professionals. [from abstract]

Caregivers constitute an important informal workforce, often undervalued, facing challenges to maintain their caring role, health and wellbeing. This study investigates the physical and mental health of Thai adult caregivers. [from abstract]

In 1997, regional specialist training was established in Fiji, consisting of one-year Postgraduate Diplomas followed by three-year master’s degree programs in anesthesia, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, pediatrics and surgery. The evolution of these programs during the first 12 years is presented in this article. [from abstract]

This study systematically evaluated a program to improve rural health services and reduce inequality in urban and rural services by requiring urban doctors to spend time in rural hospitals. The evaluation assessed changes over time in hospital performance and the rural-urban performance gap. [adapted from abstract]

The objective of this study was to measure resilience, burnout, compassion satisfaction, personal meaning in patient care and intolerance of uncertainty in Australian general practice registrars. [from abstract]

This study describes health worker perceptions and explores the factors that influence job satisfaction and dissatisfaction of health personnel working on the HIV response in Vietnam and confirms the relationship between stigmatization of people living with HIV (PLHIV) and stigma experienced by staff because of association with PLHIV from families, colleagues, and society. [adapted from abstract]

This study examines how the development of brain drain-responsive
policies is driven by the effects of nurse migration and how such efforts aim to achieve mind-shifts among nurses, governing and regulatory bodies, and public and private institutions in the Philippines and worldwide. [from abstract]

This article describes and intervention to introduce a model of community health service organization, as implemented in urban areas, to less developed rural areas in China and evaluate the impact of this model on health care utilization. [adapted from abstract]

This study found that limited data collection systems and lack of exit interviews has meant that up-to-date, reliable and accurate data regarding all exiting health workers (HW) (not only those who intend to emigrate) are not readily available. Without such datasets, the dynamics of mobility and migration within the Pacific health workforce remain poorly understood and the development of strategies to retain HW severely hampered. [from author]