East Asia & Pacific

Textbook of Australian Rural Health

This text describes how rural health professionals and rural communities are currently working towards healthy communities. Significant rural issues are analysed with regard to professional practice and personal lifestyles, as well as how these issues could be addressed by innovative future practice or how they present challenges for learning or teaching. [adapted from author]

Access to General Practitioner Services amongst Underserved Australians: A Microsimulation Study

This paper aims to examine equity of utilisation of general practitioner services in Australia, particularly those living in remote or rural areas. [from abstract]

Effectiveness of an Intervention in Increasing Community Health Clinician Provision of Preventive Care: A Study Protocol of a Non-Randomised, Multiple-Baseline Trial

This study aims to assess the effectiveness of a multi-strategic practice change intervention in increasing clinician’s routine provision of preventive care across a network of community health services. [from abstract]

Scale-Up of Community-Based Malaria Control Can be Achieved without Degrading Community Health Workers' Service Quality: The Village Malaria Worker Project in Cambodia

Cambodia recently scaled up their Village Malaria Worker (VMW) project by substantially increasing the number of VMWs and expanding the project’s health services to include treatment of fever, diarrhoea, and acute respiratory infections in children under five. This study examined if the scale-up interfered with VMWs’ service quality, actions, and knowledge of malaria control, and analysed VMWs’ overall achievements and perceptions of the newly added health services. [from abstract]

Toward Development of a Rural Retention Strategy in Lao People’s Democratic Republic: Understanding Health Worker Preferences

This technical report presents the results of a discrete choice experiment (DCE) conducted by the Lao People’s Democratic Republic Ministry of Health, in partnership with the World Health Organization and CapacityPlus, using CapacityPlus’s rural retention survey toolkit. The DCE surveyed health professional students and health workers practicing in rural provinces to investigate their motivational preferences for potential strategies to increase attraction and retention in the country’s rural and remote settings. [from publisher]

Human Resources for Health in Maternal, Neonatal and Reproductive Health at Community Level: A Profile of Timor-Leste

This profile summarises the available information on the cadres working at community level in Timor-Leste: their diversity, distribution, supervisory structures, education and training, as well as the policy and regulations that govern their practice. [from summary]

Comprehensive Framework for Human Resources for Health System Development in Fragile and Post-Conflict States

The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive, engaging, and visible framework of HRH system development. This has been further developed from the lessons distilled from Japanese experiences of supporting HRH system development in three fragile and post-conflict health systems: Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cambodia. [from author]

Human Resources for Health in Maternal, Neonatal and Reproductive Health at a Community Level: A Profile of Cambodia

This profile summarises the available information on the cadres working at community level in Cambodia; their diversity, distribution, supervisory structures, education and training, as well as the policy and regulations that govern their practice. [from summary]

Using Entrustable Professional Activities to Guide Curriculum Development in Psychiatry Training

Clinical activities that trainees can be trusted to perform with minimal or no supervision have been labelled as Entrustable Professional Activities. The authors sought to examine what activities could be entrusted to psychiatry trainees in their first year of specialist training. [from abstract]

How Much Time Do Nurses Have for Patients? A Longitudinal Study Quantifying Hospital Nurses' Patterns of Task Time Distribution and Interactions with Health Professionals

This article aimed to quantify how nurses distribute their time across tasks, with patients, in individual tasks, and engagement with other health care providers; and how work patterns changed over a two year period.

Factors Associated with Job Satisfaction among Chinese Community Health Workers: A Cross-Sectional Study

This study aims to clarify the level of job satisfaction of Chinese community health workers between a metropolitan and a small city in Liaoning province and explore its associated factors. [from abstract]

Pacific Regional Human Resource for Health: Policy Discussion Paper

This presentation was part of the University of New South Wales’ short course on managing human resources for health. It introduces the issues and challenges in HRH in 13 Pacific Island Nations leading to a proposed scheme to manage HRH migration and mobility. [adapted from author]

Aboriginal Health Workers: An Illustrative Example of Workforce Substitution

This presentation was part of the University of New South Wales’ short course on managing human resources for health. It outlines an attempt to create a new form of health workforce to not only fill a gap but to deliver services better than traditional health professionals. [adapted from author]

National Health Workforce Innovation and Reform Strategic Framework for Action 2011-2015

This framework has been designed to provide an overarching, national platform that will guide future health workforce policy and planning in Australia. It sets out key priority areas and five essential domains that create the foundation for an integrated, high performing workforce fit to meet Australia’s health care needs.[from foreword]

Community Participation in Rural Primary Health Care: Intervention or Approach?

This literature review focused on evidence of the effectiveness of community participation and its role in rural primary health care service design and delivery to increase the likelihood of genuine community-health sector partnerships and more responsive health services for rural communities.

Systematic Factors of Errors in the Case Identification Process of the National Routine Health Information System: A Case Study of Modified Field Health Services Information System in the Philippines

This study aimed to investigate the mechanisms of errors in the case identification process in the existing routine health information system in the Philippines by measuring the risk of committing errors for health program indicators. [from abstract]

Urbanization and Physician Maldistribution: a Longitudinal Study in Japan

In this study, the authors analyze the trends in the geographic disparities of population and physician distribution among the secondary tier of medical care in Japan. [adapted from author]

Strengthening Supportive Supervision at the District Health Level in the Pacific

This brief outlines the need for supportive supervision, the challenges to its implementation in the Pacific, and recommendations to address these. [adapted from author]

Feeling Connected: Technology and the Support of Clinical Teachers in Distant Locations

This paper discusses a key finding arising from a qualitative research project which explored the provision of educational support to clinical teachers who were at least 100 kilometres distant from a university medical school. [from abstract]

Relationship between Job Satisfaction, Burnout, and Turnover Intention among Physicians from Urban State-Owned Medical Institutions in Hubei, China: a Cross-Sectional Study

This study aimed to analyze the relationship between job satisfaction, burnout, and turnover intention, and further to determine whether occupational burnout can serve as a mediator among Chinese physicians from urban state-owned medical institutions. [from abstract]

Implementing Knowledge into Practice for Improved Neonatal Survival: a Cluster-Randomised, Community-Based Trial in Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam

The overall objective of this study was to evaluate if a facilitation intervention on the community level, with a problem-solving approach involving local representatives if the healthcare system and the community, results in improvements of neonatal health and survival. [adapted from abstract]

Human Resources for Health in Maternal, Neonatal and Reproductive Health at Community Level: a Profile of the Philippines

This profile summarises the available information on the cadres working at community level in the Philippines; their diversity, distribution, supervisory structures, education and training, as well as the policy and regulations that govern their practice. [from summary]

Review of Health Leadership and Management Capacity in Lao People's Democratic Republic

This review describes the current state of health leadership and management capacity and issues that affect management performance at the district level in Lao People’s Democratic Republic. [from summary]

Review of Health Leadership and Management Capacity in Solomon Islands

This report describes the current health management and leadership capacity and issues that affect management performance in the Solomon Islands. [from author]

Human Resources for Health in Maternal, Neonatal and Reproductive Health at a Community Level: a Profile of Vanuatu

This profile summarises the available information on the cadres working at community level in Vanuatu: their diversity, distribution, supervisory structures, education and training, as well as the policy and regulations that govern their practice.

Review of Health Leadership and Management Capacity in Timor-Leste

This review describes the current situation of health leadership and management capacity in Timor-Leste. [from summary]

Getting Health Workers to Rural Areas: Innovative Analytic Work to Inform Policy Making

This paper presents results of an empirical study conducted in Liberia and Vietnam using a discrete choice experiment (DCE) which aimed to predict the likelihood of health workers taking up a rural area job under alternative incentive schemes.

Human Resources for Health in Maternal, Neonatal and Reproductive Health: a Profile of Indonesia

This profile summarises the available information on the cadres working at community level in Indonesia; their diversity, distribution, supervisory structures, education and training, as well as the policy and regulations that govern their practice. [from summary]

Review of Health Leadership and Management Capacity in Fiji

This review describes the current situation of health leadership and management capacity at the sub-divisional level in Fiji. [from summary]

Motivating Health Workers to Serve in Rural Lao PDR

This issue of Voices describe an effort to assess health workers’ preferences in order to determine the most effective incentives for rural service. [adapted from author]