Americas & Caribbean

This article reports on a workforce information system designed to assemble the latest available data on oncologist supply and cancer incidence and prevalence, which was developed in anticipation of projected oncologist workforce shortages. [adapted from abstract]

The goal of this study was to assess whether house calls by community health workers and public health nurses affected isoniazid adherence for latent tuberculosis infection or frequency of adverse effects. [adapted from author]

The purpose of this study was to clarify the impact of long nurse working hours on patient safety culture in Japan, the US, and Chinese Taiwan using the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture assessment tool. [adapted from abstract]

Using the framework of best practice literature, this article analyses a four-year collaborative process between two universities to build health worker capacity at the primary healthcare and system levels to address gaps in mental health services. [adapted from abstract]

Using the case of Brazil, this study investigates the extent to which policies and interventions seeking to increase the accessibility of health services among the poor have been effective in decreasing neonatal mortality. [adapted from abstract]

The objective of this study was to identify dimensions of organizational context and individual nurse characteristics that influence pediatric nurses’ self-reported use of research. [from abstract]

The objective of this study was to understand what factors influence pharmacists’ adoption of prescribing using a model for the diffusion of innovations in healthcare services in Alberta, the first Canadian jurisdiction to grant pharmacists a wide range of prescribing privileges. [adapted from abstract]

The objective of this study was to determine current emigration trends of sub-Saharan African physicians found in the physician workforce of the United States. [from abstract]

This study was undertaken to explore the viability of supervising pharmacy students remotely – a model referred to in the literature as role-emergent placements as a possible model to fill the gap in on-site pharmacy preceptors at role-established sites. This paper discusses pharmacy preceptors and long-term care facility non-pharmacist staff experiences with this model. [adapted from abstract]

This initiative’s objective was to develop a standardized verbal autopsy training program and evaluate whether its implementation resulted in comparable knowledge required to classify perinatal cause of death by physicians and non-physicians. [from abstract]

The authors tested the impacts of a professionally assisted peer-group intervention on Chilean health workers’ HIV-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors using a quasi-experimental design with a pretest and 3 month post-test. [from author]

This study attempts to gather information on health care aides, a cadre that constitutes a significant component of the health care labor force providing home and community care in Canada, to fill gaps in basic information about this component of the workforce including motivations, retention, and adequacy of their training. [adapted from author]

This article describes the rationale for the UK to learn from Brazil’s scaled-up Community Health Worker primary care strategy, starting with a pilot project in North Wales. [from abstract]

The objective of this study is to compare measures of cost and quality of care (in-hospital mortality, 30-day same-facility readmission, and length of stay) of hospitalists vs. traditional physician providers in a large Canadian community hospital setting. [from abstract]

This brief outlines the process and findings of a study that compared the attitudes, perceived barriers and enablers of intimate partner violence universal screening among physicians, nurses, and community health workers. [adapted from author]

This study was a program of research designed to develop a comprehensive understanding of Canadian nurse migration and mobility. The program was comprised of three interrelated studies aimed to determine the reasons why Canadian nurses migrate to the US for work, the drivers of nurse mobility across the provinces/territories in Canada, and the challenges that they have experienced with seeking employment in Canada that could be addressed through changes to policy. [adapted from summary]

This study aimed to elicit the views of primary healthcare providers from Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua on how adolescent sexual and reproductive health care in their communities can be improved. [from abstract]

Using a comparative case study, this report looks at health care services and human resources in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and the United States to identify constraints on health care capacity to explore how the effective management of migration across these countries might help meet the demand for health care services. Nursing personnel are the focus of the report. [from summary]

This article descibes the importance of health workers in tackling problems in health care systems, the impact of the brain drain of health workers, and uses an example of out migration in Jamaica to demonstrate the issues.

This paper describes the theory underlying an interprofessional educational intervention developed in Canada for the purpose of improving chronic disease management in primary care in order to explain explicitly the theory underlying this intervention, to describe its components in detail and to assess the intervention’s feasibility and acceptability. [adapted from abstract]

The purpose of the study was to explain the process implementing a new cadre of nurse practitioners role in British Columbia as it was occurring and to identify factors that could enhance the implementation process. An explanatory, single case study with embedded units of analysis was used. [adapted from abstract]

This research aimed to better understand how work practice reorganization, supported by ICTs, and particularly by telehealth, may influence professional, educational, and organizational factors relating to Quebec nurses, notably those working in peripheral regions. [from abstract]

This study explored factors influencing rural and urban emergency department clinicians’ participation in a web-based knowledge exchange intervention that focused on best practice knowledge about pediatric emergency care. [from abstract]

This report highlights trends across Canada, across regulated nursing professions and across a variety of demographic, education, mobility and employment characteristics to inform health human resource planning in Canada. [from summary]

A discrete choice experiment was conducted to evaluate the job preferences of nurses and midwives currently working on a short-term contract in the public sector in Ayacucho, Peru to assess factors that would attract short-term contract nurses and midwives to work in a rural area of Peru. [adapted from abstract]

This study assessed the impact of a behavioral telehealth ethical competencies training program on behavioral health providers’ development of behavioral telehealth competency. Video vignettes evaluating the 14 competencies, self-reported competence surveys and follow-up surveys of progress on telehealth goals were utilized to assess effects of the training. [adapted from abstract]

This brief outlines the health system context and the basid statistics and facts about the nursing workforce in Costa Rica.

The current article describes research to determine the physician supply and demand across the State of Hawai’i. [from abstract]

This study evaluated participant satisfaction of an interactive educational program that offers peer-to-peer training to physicians and their office staff on topics ranging from clinical tools/skills to office management relevant to general practitioner practices. [adapted from abstract]

Although the ethical, humanistic and solidarity Cuba’s general medical training program does not provide all skills needed by a general practitioner in South Africa, so Cuba has applied a curricular strategy of 12 complementary courses to develop the requested additional skills. The objective of this study was to determine why the complementary curricular strategy has not been entirely successful and identify possible courses of action for improvement. [adapted from abstract]