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Internationally Trained Pharmacists in Great Britain: What do Registration Data Tell Us About Their Recruitment?

Internationally trained health professionals are an important part of the domestic workforce, but little is known about pharmacists who come to work in Great Britain. This paper explores the extent to which Great Britain is relying on the contribution of internationally trained pharmacists and to explore their routes of entry and demographic characteristics and compare them to those of pharmacists trained in Great Britain. [adapted from abstract]

Snapshot of the Australian Public Hospital Pharmacy Workforce in 2005

The first study of the Australian hospital pharmacy workforce (public and private hospitals) was undertaken in 2001. Data from this study provided a baseline and were used to estimate the future demand for hospital pharmacists. This article summarizes an update of this survey done in 2005. [adapted from author]

Snapshot of the Australian Public Hospital Pharmacy Workforce in 2007

The first study of the Australian hospital pharmacy workforce (public and private hospitals) was undertaken in 2001. Data from this study provided a baseline and were used to estimate the future demand for hospital pharmacists. This article summarizes an update of this survey done in 2007. [adapted from author]

Operations Manual for Delivery of HIV Prevention, Care and Treatment at Primary Health Centers in High-Prevalence, Resource-Constrained Settings

The operations manual provides guidance on planning and delivering HIV prevention, care, and treatment services at health centres in countries with high HIV prevalence. It provides an operational framework to ensure that HIV services can be provided in an integrated, efficient and quality-assured manner. [from introduction]

Building Capacity to Save Women's Lives in Mali

The Capacity Project partnered with the Ministry of Health and other organizations to perform a pilot study to demonstrate the efficiency and the safety of matrones using active management of the third stage of labor with skilled birth attendants who were authorized to perform the practice and assessed factors that could affect their ability. [from author]

Traditional Birth Attendants in Rural Nepal: Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices about Maternal and Newborn Health

Efforts to formalize the role of traditional birth attendants (TBAs) in maternal and neonatal health programmes have had limited success. Continued attendance by TBAs at home deliveries suggests the potential to influence maternal and neonatal outcomes. The objective of this qualitative study was to identify and understand the knowledge, attitudes and practices of TBAs in rural Nepal. [adapted from abstract]

Surgeons and HIV: South African Attitudes

The HIV status of surgeons is a contentious matter in the context of the informed consent obtained from patients. This article presents the results of a survey of the views of practicing surgeons in South Africa regarding aspects of HIV and its impact on surgeons. [adapted from introduction]

Are Clinicians Being Prepared to Care for Abused Women? A Survey of Health Professional Education in Ontario, Canada

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]

Experiences of Districts in Implementing a National Incentive Programme to Promote Safe Delivery in Nepal

Nepal’s Safe Delivery Incentive Programme (SDIP) was introduced nationwide in 2005 with the intention of increasing utilisation of professional care at childbirth. It provided cash to women giving birth in a health facility and an incentive to the health provider for each delivery attended, either at home or in the facility. We explored early implementation of the programme at the district-level to understand the factors that have contributed to its low uptake. [from abstract]

Improving Education in Primary Care: Development of an Online Curriculum Using the Blended Learning Model

Standardizing the experiences of medical students in a community preceptorship where clinical sites vary by geography and discipline can be challenging. Computer-assisted learning is prevalent in medical education and can help standardize experiences, but often is not used to its fullest advantage. A blended learning curriculum combining web-based modules with face-to-face learning can ensure students obtain core curricular principles. [from abstract]

Health Workforce Development Planning in the Sultanate of Oman: a Case Study

This case outlines how Oman is continuing to turn around its excessive dependence on expatriate workforce through strategic workforce development planning. [from abstract]

New Era: Health Information Resource Centers in Southern Sudan

In Southern Sudan, the Capacity Project is strengthening the Ministry of Health’s ability to hire, train and manage a high-quality health workforce. Opened in May 2008, the Project-supported resource center provides hospital staff, medical students and Ministry of Health personnel with print and electronic materials, library services, Internet access and computer training. [adapted from author]

Community Defined Quality (CDQ): Creating Partnerships for Improving Quality

This presentation outlines a methodology to improve quality and accessibility of health care with greater involvement of the community in defining, implementing and monitoring the quality improvement process.

New Strategies for Supervision

This presentation outlines a new vision of supportive supervision that is an ongoing process, forges relationships within the system and reinforces quality outcomes at all levels. [adapted from author]

Quick Investigation of Quality (QIQ)

This presentation discusses the QIQ method of evaluating the quality of service delivery and provider performance.

Challenges of Sustainability of Health Information Systems in Developing Countries: Comparative Case Studies of Mozambique and Tanzania

Given that IT projects may take a long time to be fully institutionalized, sufficient resources are required to build the local capacity to support and sustain the project after the withdrawal of donors. Inadequate donor support often contributes to weakening rather than strengthening human resource capacity and effective system design, since it emphasizes the technology itself at the expense of the needs of the users. These factors contribute to the design and implemntation of unsustainable health information systems in developing countries. [from abstract]

Getting by on Credit: How District Health Managers in Ghana Cope with the Untimely Release of Funds

District health systems in Africa depend largely on public funding. In many countries, not only are these funds insufficient, but they are also released in an untimely fashion, thereby creating serious cash flow problems for district health managers. This paper examines how the untimely release of public sector health funds in Ghana affects district health activities and the way district managers cope with the situation. [from abstract]

Scaling Up the Stock of Health Workers: a Review

This paper synthesises some of the published and grey literature on the process of scaling up the health workforce - also known as human resources for health (HRH) - with a particular focus on increasing the number of trained providers of health services. It concentrates on low- and middle-income countries, although some literature on richer countries is included. [from summary]

Improving the Quality of Health Care When Health Workers are in Short Supply

A number of low- and middle-income countries have a severe shortage of health workers. This paper studies how health workers’ choices of labour supply and work effort impact on the quality of health services when health workers are in short supply. [from abstract]

Performance-Based Incentives

This video, produced by the Center for Global Development, outlines the case for a new metthod of disbursing donor contributions for global health called Performance-Based Incentives (PBI). PBI aims to boost global health by basing donor contributions on performance and permitting developing countries health systems to determine how to disburse these incentives. [from publisher]

Rwanda: Performance-Based Financing in the Public Sector

Rwanda is one of the pioneers of performance-based financing. Building on lessons from three donor-financed pilots, the government has assumed leadership for this approach and is scaling up a standardized model nationwide. [from author]

Experience with a Social Model of Capacity Building: the Peoples-uni

Taking advantage of societal trends involving the “third sector”, a social model of philanthropy and the open-source software and educational resource movements, provides the opportunity for online education for capacity building at low cost. The Peoples Open Access Education Initiative, Peoples-uni, aims to help build public health capacity in this way, and this paper describes its evolution. [from abstract]

Building Canadian Public Health Nursing Capacity: Implications for Action

The purpose of this research was to assist public health policy makers and managers to develop programs and policies to enhance the effectiveness of Public Health Nurse (PHN) services. The research question was, “What organizational attributes support PHNs to practice their full scope of competencies?” [adapted from author]

Coaching in Nursing: an Introduction

This tool is a hands-on guide that can be used to teach nurses coaching principles and skills in order to develop individual professional competencies and to improve nurse staffing retention. [from author]

Health Service Planning and Policy-Making: a Toolkit for Nurses and Midwives

The purpose of this toolkit, consisting of 7 booklets, is to provide nurses and midwives with tools to effectively participate in and influence health care planning and policy-making. This tool-kit has been designed for use by any nurse or midwife who has an interest in advocating for change in their work environment. [from publisher]

WHO Guidelines for Implementing Strategic Directions for Strengthening Nursing and Midwifery Services in the African Region 2007-2017

The regional guidelines for implementing the SDNM in the African Region are to accelerate action at country level. The guidelines also provide both a framework for WHO action to support countries in improving the quality of nursing and midwifery services, and a guide for action at national and local levels. Possible priority actions have been proposed to countries to facilitate strengthening of nursing and midwifery services at national and local levels. [from foreword]

Health and Fragile States

With some of the worst health indicators and the least adequate health services in the world, providing health services and rebuilding health systems in fragile states is a complex undertaking. This health and fragile states dossier highlights the challenges and approaches to delivering health services in fragile states. [from publisher]

Challenges Impacting on the Quality of Care to Persons Living with HIV/AIDS and Other Terminal Illnesses with Reference to Kanye Community Home Based Care Programme

This paper aims to discuss the challenges influencing the state of caregiving in the Kanye community home-based care programme in Botswana. [from abstract]

WHO UNESCO FIP Pharmacy Education Taskforce

Because of their knowledge of medicines and clinical therapeutics, pharmacists are suitably placed for task shifting in health care and could be further trained to undertake functions such as clinical management and laboratory diagnostics. Indeed, pharmacists have been shown to be willing, competent, and cost-effective providers of what the professional literature calls pharmaceutical care interventions; however, internationally, there is an underuse of pharmacists for patient care and public health efforts. [from abstract]

Task-Shifting HIV Counseling and Testing Services in Zambia: the Role of Lay Counselors

The Zambia Prevention, Care and Treatment Partnership began training and placing community volunteers as lay counsellors in order to complement the efforts of the health care workers in providing HIV counselling and testing services. These volunteers are trained using the standard national counselling and testing curriculum. This study was conducted to review the effectiveness of lay counsellors in addressing staff shortages and the provision of HIV counselling and testing services. [from abstract]