Americas & Caribbean

This toolkit was designed for nurse employers across the province of Ontario to use as a resource in working toward the 70% full-time nurse commitment. It is a practical guide to assist Nurse Managers and Human Resource Staff in identifying staffing needs and creating organization-specific strategies to increase full-time employment for nurses. [from author]

The purpose of this report is to provide background information to support the development of guidelines for the integration of internationally educated health professionals into the Ontario workplace. [from summary]

The objective of this document was to conduct a systematic review of the evidence on characteristics of community health workers (CHWs) and CHW interventions, outcomes of such interventions, costs and cost-effectiveness of CHW interventions, and characteristics of CHW training. [from abstract]

The Capacity Project worked with governments and partners in Central America and Uganda to test approaches for strengthening supervision systems in the health sector, as one component of the Project’s workforce performance support strengthening. [from summary]

This background paper documents the analytical work conducted for the World Health Report 2006 to provide new evidence on the relationship between the density of human resources for health and the coverage of key health interventions, at subnational level in Brazil. The analysis highlights how socioeconomic conditions of the population moderates the ability of health workers to perform their tasks efficiently and how various policies have succeeded in increasing the coverage of antenatal care services. [from publisher]

This study evaluates the impact and sustainability of a competitive voucher program on the quality of reproductive health care for poor and underserved female adolescents and the usefulness of the simulated patient method for such evaluation. [from abstract]

The physician assistant (PA) profession is a nationally recognized medical profession in the United States of America. The authors examined the 1980-2007 US census data to determine the demographic distribution of the PA workforce and PA-to-population relationships. Maps were developed to provide graphical display of the data. [adapted from abstract]

A well trained and well managed workforce is crucial for facilitating access to good quality health services. This brief article examines the development of the health workforce and the systems that support them in Cuba. [adapted from author]

In resource poor settings, informatics represents an important and emerging focus in healthcare settings. However, in developing countries, the need for training and retention of health professionals in informatics remains one of the greatest public health challenges. This article outlines a training program in informatics in Peru. [adapted from introduction]

This paper describes and analyses the perceptions and opinions of managers and workers about the benefits and challenges of the contracting model for health services to private providers that has been in place for almost 10 years in Mexico. [adapted from abstract]

The nursing service of a Quebec-based health and social services centre has developed an evidence-informed approach to capture knowledge from experienced nurses, and transfer it to new nursing staff. The project has increased the success rate of new nurse orientations and retention, and has reduced the reliance on supplemental nursing resources. [adapted from author]

This study examines US osteopathic residents’ and medical students’ attitudes and willingness to practice in rural medicine. The multiple aims of this study were to determine: if there are any significant differences in interest in rural medicine among various levels of training; the relative age, gender, and race of those who are intending to pursue a career in rural health; and whether a number of demographic characteristics or participation in a rural elective significantly impacted interest in practicing in a rural area. [adapted from abstract]

The goal of this paper is twofold. It uses the recent experience of Brazil’s Family Health Program to assess the effectiveness of community based health interventions as instruments for improvements in health conditions in less developed areas. It also evaluates whether the health improvements associated with the program also brought about the changes in household behavior predicted by economic theory and noticed in other contexts. [adapted from author]

This version of Voices reveals how hospital staff are using the Project’s performance improvement approach to strengthen comprehensive HIV care. [adapted from author]

This document discusses the outcomes of a qualitative study to describe the knowledge and practices of private clinic and laboratory service providers regarding HIV and HIV counseling and testing.

The study also identifies the characteristics of the stigma that private service providers place on female sex workers, men who have sex with men, people living with HIV/AIDS and describes the experiences of these groups regarding private counseling and testing services. [adapted from executive summary]

The proportion of international medical graduates (IMGs) serving as primary care physicians in rural underserved areas (RUAs) has important policy implications. We analyzed the 2000 American Medical Association Masterfile and Area Resource File to calculate the percentage of primary care IMGs, relative to U.S. medical graduates, working in RUAs. [from abstract]

Foreign nurses are increasingly being sought, creating a lucrative business for new recruiting agencies both at home and abroad. This paper examines past and current foreign nurse use as a response to nurse shortages and its implications for domestic and global nurse workforce policies. [from abstract]

This paper advocates multiple strategies for the United States to further assist with solving the global health workforce crisis.

The fundamental importance of human resources for the development of health care systems is recognized the world over. Health districts, which constitute the middle level of the municipal health care system in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, deal with demands from all parts of the system. This research seeks to provide the essential features required in order to understand the phenomenon of increase in precarity of employment in these health districts. [from abstract]

This article details the results of a survey and environmental scan regarding educational opportunities available to future health care providers concerning the topic of intimate partner violence against women. [adapted from abstract]

The National Physician Database (NPDB) provides information on the demographic characteristics of Canadian physicians and their level of activity within the country's medical care system. It is used by governments, professional associations, consulting firms, pharmaceutical companies, researchers and the media for medical human resource planning and utilization analysis. [adapted from introduction]

This commentary outlines strategies the authors have found successful in aligning health education and training with local health needs in ways that demonstrate socially accountable outcomes for Vancouver Island, Canada. [adapted from abstract]

The issue of participation by medical providers from wealthy countries in short-term medical volunteer work in resource-poor countries has been reaised as being potentially harmful to recipient communities. This exploratory study examines the perception of short-term medical volunteer work in Guatemala from the perspective of members of recipient communities affected by or participating in these programs. [adapted from sbstract]

In the face of medical workforce shortages, governments are looking to displace doctors with alternative health care providers like nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and other health professionals such as psychologists and pharmacists to relieve bottlenecks in health care delivery. Displacing doctors in this way, or role or task substitution as it is also termed, has been actively pursued in the United Kingdom and United States. How should the medical profession react to these developments? [from author]

This study undertook an in-depth exploration of the unintended consequences of pay-for-performance programs In England and California. The authors interviewed primary care physicians in California and England and compared unintended consequences in each setting. [adapted from abstract]

Health facility assessments are being increasingly used to measure and monitor indicators of health workforce performance, but the global evidence base remains weak. The World Health Organization coordinated a series of facility-based surveys using a common approach in six countries: Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Jamaica, Mozambique, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. The objectives were to inform the development and monitoring of human resources for health policy within the countries; and to test and validate the use of standardized facility-based human resources assessment tools across different contexts.

This study evaluates the effectiveness and sustainability of a voluntary counseling and testing training program based on a training-of-trainers model. [adapted from abstract]

This study investigates the influence of demographic characteristics, provincial policies, organizational changes and emerging practice challenges on the rural–urban segments of the Canadian nursing workforce in order to describe the nature of nursing work from the perspective of rural nurse executives and frontline nurses. [adapted from introduction]

The most common problems related to Health Workers Salaries and Benefits (HWSB) in Bolivia, Peru and Chile are shortage of health workers, disparity of skills, poor distribution of health workers, inadequate working environments and low knowledge about the characteristic of HWSB. This report collects data about these countries, showing that the wages of doctors during the last fifteen years have generally had to increase more than the wages of other workers. [adapted from executive summary]

This report presents five-year workforce trends across Canada, across regulated nursing professions and across a variety of demographic, education, mobility and employment characteristics, in order to inform health human resource planning. [from executive summary]