Journal Articles

Outreach Services to Improve Access to Health Care in South Africa: Lessons from Three Community Health Worker Programmes

This article examines three South African community health worker programs, a small local non-governmental organisation, a local satellite of a national NGO, and a government-initiated service, that provide a range of services from home-based care, childcare, and health promotion to assist clients in overcoming poverty-related barriers to health care to identify factors that constrain and enable outreach services to improve access to care. [from abstract]

Rapid Assessment of a Community Health Worker Pilot Programme to Improve the Mangement of Hypertension and Diabetes in Emfuleni Sub-Distric of Gauteng Province, 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]

Policy Implementation and Financial Incentives for Nurses in South Africa: A Case Study on the Occupation Specific Dispensation

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]

Comparing the Job Satisfaction and Intention to Leave of Different Categories of Health Workers in Tanzania, Malawi, and South Africa

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]

South African University Practitioner Partnership to Strengthen Capacity in Social and Behaviour Change Communication

The following case study describes and reflects on a partnership between a southern university, the University of the Witwatersrand, and Soul City Institute to establish an academic, competency-based social and behaviour change program serving Southern Africa. [from author]

Primary Healthcare Providers' Views on Improving Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare for Adolescents in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua

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]

Taxonomy for Community-Based Care Programs Focused on HIV/AIDS Prevention, Treatment, and Care in Resource-Poor Settings

This review sought to develop taxonomy of community-based care programs focused on HIV/ AIDS in resource-limited settings in an effort to understand their key characteristics, uncover any gaps in programming, and highlight the potential roles they play. [from abstract]

Lady Health Worker Program in Pakistan: A Commentary

This article describes the Lady Health Worker Program in Pakistan based on training women from local communities to provide specific, basic primary health-care treatment plus preventive services and the success of the program in enabling timely treatment, prevention and even screening. [adapted from author]

International Collaboration: A Concept Model to Engage Nursing Leaders and Promote Global Nursing Education Partnerships

This article describes a newly developed, internationally focused concept model, “Engaging tomorrow’s international nursing leaders” which illustrates the ways alliances between international schools of nursing build nursing leaders who can facilitate global health outcomes. [adapted from summary]

Analysis of the Human Resource Management Role in Hospitals Using Ulrich Model

The research goal for this paper is to evaluate human resource’s role in specialized and sub specialized medical training hospitals of Iran, using Ulrich model. The results showed that there is a significant positive correlation between service quality and human resources. [adapted from abstract]

Assessment of Graduate Public Health Education in Nepal and Perceived Needs of Faculty and Students

The objective of this assessment was to identify challenges in graduate public health education in Nepal, and explore ways to address these challenges. [from abstract]

Brain Drain of Health Care Workers: Causes, Solutions and the Example of Jamaica

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.

Association of Health Workforce Capacity and Quality of Pediatric Care in Afghanistan

This study aimed to examine the relationship between workforce capacity and quality of pediatric care in outpatient clinics in Afghanistan. [from abstract]

Factors that Influence Midwifery Students in Ghana When Deciding Where to Practice: A Discrete Choice Experiment

This quantitative research study used a computerized structured survey containing a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to quantify the importance of different incentives and policies to encourage service to deprived, rural and remote areas by upper-year midwifery students following graduation. [from abstract]

Factors Associated with Evidence-Based Practice among Registered Nurses in Sweden: A National Cross-Sectional Study

The aim of the study was to examine individual and organizational factors associated with evidence-based practice activities as a tool to increase the quality of care and patient safety activities among registered nurses 2 years post-graduation. [adapted from abstract]

Longitudinal Study of Rural Health Workforce in Five Countries in China: Research Design and Baseline Description

The authors conducted a longitudinal study to explore the current situation and track the future evolution of the rural healthcare workforce, specifically village doctors, in China. [adapted from abstract]

Antenatal and Obstetric Care in Afghanistan: A Qualitative Study among Health Care Receivers and Health Care Providers

This study investigated how pregnant women and health care providers experience the existing antenatal and obstetric health care situation in Afghanistan. [from abstract]

Delivery of Preventive Care to Clients of Community Health Services

The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of preventive care provided by community health clinicians; the association between client and service characteristics and receipt of care; and acceptability of care in order to inform interventions that facilitate adoption of opportunistic preventive care delivery. [adapted from abstract]

Integrating HIV Care into Nurse-Led Primary Health Care Services in South Africa: A Synthesis of Three Linked Qualitative Studies

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]

Poor Retention Does Not Have to be the Rule: Retention of Volunteer Community Health Workers in Uganda

Since 2004, Healthy Child Uganda (HCU) has trained volunteer community health workers in child health promotion in rural southwest Uganda. This study analyses the retention and motivation of volunteer community health workers trained by HCU. It presents retention rates over a 5-year period and provides insight into volunteer motivation. [from abstract]

Innovative Pay-for -Performance (P4P) Strategy for Improving Malaria Management in Rural Kenya: Protocol for a Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial

The authors describe the design of a cluster-randomized controlled study to investigate the role of sustainable institutional incentives to improve management of malaria in peripheral health facilities. This study will demonstrate whether facility-based rather than individual incentives are compelling enough to change provider behavior and whether these incentives lead to cost savings as a result of targeted drug consumption. [from author]

Ten Principles of Good Interdisciplinary Team Work

This paper draws on a published systematic review of the literature combined with empirical data derived from interdisciplinary teams involved in the delivery of community rehabilitation and intermediate care services, to develop a set of competencies around effective interdisciplinary team practice. [from author]

Why Give Birth in a Health Facility? Users' and Providers' Accounts of Poor Quality of Birth Care in Tanzania

The aim of this study was to describe the weaknesses in the provision of acceptable and adequate quality care through the accounts of women who have suffered obstetric fistula, nurse-midwives at both BEmOC and CEmOC health facilities and local community members. [from abstract]

Nurses' Workarounds in Acute Healthcare Settings: A Scoping Review

This paper assesses the peer reviewed empirical evidence available on the use, proliferation, conceptualisation, rationalisation and perceived impact of nurses’ use of workarounds in acute care settings. [from abstract]

Ownership and Use of Mobile Phones among Health Workers, Caregivers of Sick Children and Adult Patients in Kenya: Cross-Sectional National Survey

This article reports recent national data on mobile phone ownership and use among health workers and patients in Kenya and examine factors influencing ownership and SMS use to help guide the policy implications of mHealth. [from author]

Information Seeking Behaviour of Physicians in Tanzania

This study addressed an important knowledge gap in the literature by identifying the information needs of physicians during their daily clinical practice and understanding the information-seeking behavior they adopt to satisfy these needs at the major public hospital in Tanzania. [from author]

Capacity of Middle Management in Health-Care Organizations for Working with People: The Case of Slovenian Hospitals

At the middle-management level, leaders are often selected for their clinical expertise and not their management skills. The purpose of this study was to examine how leaders at the middle-management level work with people in health-care. [adapted from abstract]

Unfree Markets: Socially Embedded Informal Health Providers in Northern Karnataka, India

The authors examined how informal health markets operate from the viewpoint of informal providers (those without any government-recognised medical degrees) by drawing upon data from a household survey in 2002, a provider census in 2004 and ongoing field observations from a research site in Koppal district, Karnataka, India. [adapted from author]

Understanding the Factors Influencing Health-Worker Employment Decisions in South Africa

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]

Motivation and Incentives of Rural Maternal and Neonatal Health Care Providers: A Comparison of Qualitative Findings from Burkina Faso, Ghana and Tanzania

This study explores the role of provider motivation in the quality of maternal and neonatal care. The main research questions were: which factors motivated these respondents to join the health professions; what is understood by the term motivation; what influences their motivation, job satisfaction and the quality of their care; and which incentives do these providers themselves suggest. [adapted from author]