South Africa

Using a rapid assessment, this study examines the outcomes of a pilot community health worker program to improve the management of hypertension and diabetes in Gauteng province, South Africa. [from abstract]

The article draws on a policy implementation framework to analyse the implementation of occupation-specific dispensation (OSD), a financial incentive strategy to attract, motivate, and retain health professionals in the public health sector, and seeks to determine whether the manner in which OSD was implemented caused unintended negative consequences. [from author]

The objective of this study was to compare the job satisfaction and intention to leave of different categories of health workers in Tanzania, Malawi, and South Africa. The results caution against generalising about the effectiveness of interventions in different contexts and highlight the need for less standardised and more targeted HRH strategies than has been practised to date. [from abstract]

This study documents different factors influencing models of integration within clinics of HIV care into nurse-led primary care services to increase access to treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS in high HIV burden countries. [adapted from abstract]

This paper explores the nonfinancial factors that influence health workers’ choice of employer (public, private or nongovernmental organization) or their choice of work location (urban, rural or overseas). [adapted from author]

This paper applies a health systems perspective to guide analysis of potential challenges of scaling up mHealth for the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of community-based health services (CBS) in South Africa. This formalisation of CBS is expected to bring greater standardisation of M&E and supervision systems for community health workers. [adapted from author]

In this study, decentralisation of anitretroviral treatement (ART) initiation by professional nurses through the Nurse Initiatied Management of Antiretroviral Treatment (NIMART) program was shown to increase ART uptake and reduce workloadat referral facilities, enabling them to concentrate on complicated cases. [adapted from author]

This study examines the supply of, demand for, and policy
environment of private nurse production in four selected countries. [from abstract]

The concurrent tuberculosis (TB) and HIV epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa place all healthcare workers at increased risk of exposure to TB. This study explores personal experiences, attitudes and perceptions of medical doctors following treatment for TB within the healthcare system. [from abstract]

This research evaluated the graduating students’ perceptions of transformed curriculum called the Graduate Entry Medical Programme in South Africa. [adapted from abstract]

This study investigated inter-relationships between emotional intelligence (EI), work stress and burnout in a group of nurses in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. The moderating effect of EI in the stress–burnout relationship and group differences (nurses working in different wards) in burnout were also investigated. [from abstract]

This study attempted to identify factors that would influence registered nurses’ decisions to stay with their current employers in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. [from abstract]

This study aimed to determine the general managerial and public health competencies that are essential for primary health care clinic managers in South Africa. [from author]

This article describes the development of a new mid-level medical worker in South Africa including the way in which scopes of practice and course design were negotiated and the progress during the early years. [adapted from abstract]

The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a referral system - where community health workers (CHW) were trained to refer babies with illnesses or identified danger signs - by describing CHW referral completion rates as well as mothers’ health-care seeking practices. [adapted from author]

Recent policy recommendations have called for increased research efforts to inform the design of cost-effective interventions to address the shortage of health workers in rural areas. This paper takes forward the recent use of discrete choice experiments to assess the effects of potential incentives to attract nurses to rural areas. [from abstract]

This article elaborates what South African medical specialists find satisfying about working in the public and private sectors, at present, and how to better incentivize retention in the public sector. [from abstract]

This article outlines a program in South Africa that has developed an innovative mid-level medical worker model that can contribute substantively to the development of quality district-level health care and examines the priorities for expanding and sustaining the program going forward. [adapted from author]

This article quantifies the number of HIV health workers required to be added to the current HIV workforce to achieve universal access to HIV treatment in South Africa, under different eligibility criteria. [from abstract]

This article outlines the need for and different types of models for increasing the health workforce in South Africa to create a stable human resource base in the health sector. [adapted from author]

This brief outlines the issues surrounding constraints in the health workforce which have emerged as a key obstacle to scaling-up access to prevention and treatment for the 5.7 million people currently living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa. [adapted from summary]

This study sought to prove that mentoring plays an important role in professional nurse training and support and that recall of lost-to-follow-up patients is feasible and effective in improving ART services in rural settings. [adapted from author]

There is growing interest in expanding testing coverage through the implementation of innovative models such as home-based HIV counselling and testing (HBHCT) by trained lay counsellors. With the aim of informing scale up, this paper discusses client characteristics and acceptability of an HBHCT intervention implemented in rural South Africa. [from abstract]

This study evaluated the cost-effectiveness of down-referring stable antiretroviral therapy (ART) patients from a doctor-managed, hospital-based ART clinic to a nurse-managed primary health care facility in Johannesburg, South Africa. [from abstract]

The study aims to compare two task-shifting approaches to the dispensing of anti-retroviral therapy (ART): indirectly supervised pharmacist’s assistants and nurse-based pharmaceutical care models against the standard of care which involves a pharmacist dispensing ART. [adapted from abstract]

Interns are a vulnerable group of healthcare workers, cited as having the highest incidence of accidental needle-stick injuries and splashes with blood or body fluids. This study compared the incidence of occupational exposure between first- and second-year interns in South Africa to estabilsh the severity of the problem. [adapted from abstract]

This paper discusses the ethical and legal constraints on a healthcare worker who has been occupationally exposed to possible HIV infection in circumstances where the patient will not/is not in a position to give consent to be tested to establish his/her HIV status, which is a prerequisite for the healthworker to receive postexposure prophylaxis in South Africa. [adapted from abstract]

This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among private sector doctors who manage HIV and AIDS patients in KwaZulu-Natal to collect data on private sector doctors’ HIV testing practices.

Healthcare workers (HCWs) can play an important role in assisting patients to stop smoking, but this role is undermined if they themselves smoke. The study determined the prevalence of tobacco smoking and alcohol use among HCWs in public hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. [from abstract]

The authors wished to establish the use of existing diabetes management guidelines by general practitioners in Tshwane, South Africa. [adapted from abstract]