Journal Articles

This umbrella review aims to synthesize the current evidence on the effectiveness of interventions to promote nurse retention in rural or remote areas, and to present a taxonomy of potential strategies to improve nurse retention in those regions. [from abstract]

This review reports findings on a systematic review analyzing the effectiveness of preventive interventions delivered by community health workers for maternal and child health in low- and middle-income countries. [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]

Health care professionals are expected to be aware of how to identify and manage the consequences of female genital mutilation in order to ensure that those affected by the practice receive quality health care, and their integration and legitimacy within the communities allow them to play a key role in the prevention of the practice. This study sought to examine the knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding female genital mutilation among health workers in rural settings in Gambia. [adapted from abstract]

With increasing age, physical capacity decreases and the time needed for recovery increases, while the demands of work do not change with age. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between physical activity and work ability of health workers using both cross sectional and prospective analyses. [adapted from author]

This study examined the implementation of performance management of health care workers in order to propose strategies for improvement. [from abstract]

This study investigated the acceptance of home-based counselling and testing by lay counselors, its equity in uptake and the effect of negative life events with a cluster-randomized trial. [adapted from abstract]

This paper describes an evaluation of the effectiveness of an intervention in which lay counselors led collaborative stepped care for common mental disorders in public and private sector primary care settings, and the impact this intervention had on health and psychosocial outcomes. [adapted from abstract]

This study explores whether and how socio-cultural factors such as influence of gendered norms and extended family relationships impact lady health workers’ home-visit rates. [adapted from abstract]

This article reports a study which developed a 13-item professional attitudes and 11-item behaviors inventory in order to investigate medical professional attitudes and behaviors in China and explore the influencing factors. [adapted from abstract]

This study assesses the internal contracting, an approach where contractors work within the ministry of health but do not hire or fire health workers, as a means for improving the management of district health services and strengthening service delivery. [adapted from author]

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 article discusses the challenge of health workforce brain drain, the root causes of migration, the need for evidence-based solutions, policy options and the role of high-income countries. [adapted from author]

This study evaluates the impact of an intervention that improve the quality of services to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV at its health facilities, which included provider training, supportive supervision, detailed performance standards, repeated assessments of service quality, and task shifting of group education to lay workers. [adapted from abstract]

This study qualitatively assessed the process of implementing a tool developed to integrate data from health programs at the district level to enable district health management teams to review and monitor program progress for specific health issues to make informed service delivery decisions; and evaluated the tool’s effect on data-informed decision making at the district level. [adapted from abstract]

This study tested a program of assessment for competency-based health worker education designed to evaluate the maximum facilitation of learning and robustness of high-stake decisions as well as supply information for the improvement of curricular quality. [adapted from author]

This exploratory study investigated general practitioners’ (GPs’) views and experiences of consulting with young people (aged 12–19 years) presenting with emotional distress in general practice. [from abstract]

The authors aimed to assess the extent of association or agreement between different spatially explicit nationwide general practitioner (GP) workforce data sets in Australia to identify any disagreements that would imply differential relationships with primary healthcare relevant outcomes with different data sets. The study also enumerates these associations across categories of rurality or remoteness. [adapted from abstract]

This study investigates how members of advisory groups of National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence conceptualize evidence and experience the process of developing clinical guidelines for health workers to improve clinical and public health practice. [adapted from author]

This study describes the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of tuberculosis (TB) program personnel involved with tracing activities as part of a national pilot project in South Africa, the TB Tracer Project, which aims to decrease default rates and improve patient outcomes. [adapted from abstract]

The purpose of this paper is to disseminate the protocol for a project designed to identify ways of strengthening district management in order to address health workforce inadequacies by improving health workforce performance in sub-Saharan Africa and reflect on the key challenges encountered during the development of this methodology and how they are being overcome. [adapted from abstract]

This article opens a debate about how to think about moving forward with the emerging twin movements of human resources for health and universal health coverage (UHC). The authors argue that not only should the movement for UHC be paired with current efforts to address the human resources crisis, but also, for both to succeed, we need to know more about how health policy works in low and middle income countries. [from abstract]

The objective of this study was to identify the characteristics of a good clinical teacher as perceived by resident physicians in Japan, a non-Western country, and to compare the results with those obtained in Western countries. [from abstract]

Since 2007 a portfolio of learning has become a requirement for assessment of postgraduate family medicine training by the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa. The aim of this study was to investigate the portfolio’s acceptability, educational impact, and perceived usefulness for assessment of competence. [from abstract]

Although significant improvements in teaching methodologies have been made in all areas of medicine and health care, studies reveal that students in many areas of health care taking an objective structured clinical examination express difficulties. This feasibility study assessed the educational effectiveness of an integrated objective structured clinical examination using both standardized patients and virtual patients. [adapted from abstract]

This article discusses the emergence of community health workers as a focal point of international discussions of primary health care systems and the way that community health worker programs have changed accordingly. [adapted from author]

The purpose of this research was to assess the extent to which the use of non-resident labor in the health sector, specifically non-resident nurses, might address the well-known barriers to recruitment and retention of remote health professionals [from author]

This report provides recommendations for initiating, sustaining and expanding rural dental education programs based on the experience of the University of Ibadan in Nigeria where dental students are prepared not only to provide skilled care to individual patients, but also to assume responsibility for the community as a whole. [adapted from abstract]

This study assessed the role of women as fractional full-time equivalent rural academics in the context of significant health workforce shortage and increasing academic demand and concluded that female doctors who are willing to take on part-time work are supporting the rural medical teaching workforce. [adapted from abstract]