Education and Training

This document describes an approach to developing competencies that can guide interprofessional education and collaborative practice for all professions in a variety of contexts and is the first attempt to develop a Canadian model of interprofessional competencies that is applicable to all health professions. [from author]

This article describes a systematic process to develop and implement two strategic action plans focussing on competence development based on specific job descriptions. The approach was a change from only focussing on training, to a broader, long term approach to human resource development for comprehensive TB control. [adapted from abstract]

This paper examines aging of the general medical practitioner and specialist workforce in Australia and projects the numbers and timing of their retirement to 2025. It also discusses the impact that the retirement of experienced health care professionals has on the training requirements of the future health care workforce. [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 session will focus on different model programs incorporating novel techniques to optimize training of health workers. Discussion will include the realities of brain drain, health worker migration, and maintaining a vibrant health workforce. [from author]

The GO Tool is a comprehensive resource connecting health professions students to domestic and international reproductive health training opportunities. [from author]

CORE is an open access, cutting edge tool for building presentations on the full spectrum of reproductive health topics. It has sample slides for easy insertion into a presentation that users can download as well as fact sheets, activities, studies and other resources. [adapted from publisher]

This paper describes a programme in Zimbabwe aimed at responding more effectively to the HIV/AIDS epidemic by reinforcing a critical competence-based training institution and producing public health leaders. [adapted from abstract]

This paper illustrates how decision-makers can use evidence and tools from an equity-oriented toolkit to scale up training and education of health workers. [adapted from abstract]

The purpose of this paper is to present a complex yet transparent, computable model to simulate the regulation of the flow of personnel through a multiple-exit eye care training scheme linked to the health workforce. The proposed training system is based on the notion that all practitioners within eye care be trained with a selection of topics from a common set of competences. In theory this would allow any practitioner to increase his or her range of competences by both acquiring new ones and by lifting the standard of those already attained.

Voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) is a cornerstone for successful implementation of prevention, care and support services among HIV negative and positive individuals. VCT is also perceived to be an effective strategy in risk reduction among sexually active young people. This study aimed to assess the acceptability of VCT and its actual uptake among young health care professional students. [adapted from abstract]

This presentation provdes users with a process for accomplishing an HRH situation analysis by identifying key information and through familiarization with analytical models to identify problems.

Ethiopia does not have a sufficient health care workforce to meet the population’s demand for services and the burden of disease. The objective of this project was to assess the usefulness and feasibility of collecting key participant and training information for monitoring and planning of HIV/AIDS services. This paper describes a project that uses training data to follow up with providers after training to assess whether they are still working in HIV/AIDS-related services. [adapted from introduction]

Medical doctors and nurses in Bangladesh are concentrated in urban secondary and tertiary hospitals, while 70% of the population lives in rural areas. This situation has created a major challenge for the national health system, particularly for reducing the high maternal mortality rate, with fewer than 20% of births being attended by a skilled birth attendant. The Declaration of Safe Motherhood was desgined to address this issue, supportetd by a number of national programs and strategies. [from summary]

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]

Empirical investigations of health worker training in Kenya have been limited to mappings of health service providers in terms of cadre and distribution and assessments of the training needs for various skills. However, there has not been a comprehensive study of the influence of training on the provision of quality Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC). We seek to fill this gap by assessing the link between health provider training and practice with regard to the provision of EmOC. [from author]

This study documents and assesses the impact of a major educational and support program on a change in the health service provision of a neonatal intensive care unit. [adapted from abstract]

Ethiopia’s poor health status is due primarily to communicable diseases, poor nutrition, and lack of access to health services in general and for most of the rural, nomadic pastoralist and fringe areas in particular. In response, the government has launched a Health Extension Program for which training of Health Extension Workers has been started. This study assesses the first year’s training program in terms of its inputs, processes and output. [from abstract]

Despite progress in developing more effective training methodologies, training initiatives for health workers continue to experience common pitfalls that have beset the overall success and cost-effectiveness of these programs for decades. These pitfalls are now seen as aggravating the current crisis in human resources for health and impeding the effective scale-up of training and the potential impact of promising strategies such as task shifting to address health worker shortages.

While evaluation is, in theory, a component of training programmes in health planning, training needs in this area remain significant. Improving health systems necessarily calls for having more professionals who are skilled in evaluation. This article describes a four-week course taken by two cohorts of health professionals from 11 francophone African countries. We discuss how the course came to be, its content, its teaching processes and the master’s programme results for students. [from abstract]

The purpose of this primer is to document and promote best practices gleaned from worldwide experience in training private sector providers. [from introduction]

This presentation from the 2008 Asia-Pacific Action Alliance on Human Resource for Health Conference discusses the need for the development of a disaster management course for healthcare workers in Sri Lanka.


To view this presentation, you must have either Microsoft PowerPoint or download the free PowerPoint Viewer.

This presentation from the 2008 Asia-Pacific Action Alliance on Human Resource for Health Conference discusses the need to revisit public heath core competencies at the country levels, as well as which core competencies are required and how to proceed with implimentation [adapted from presentation].

To view this presentation, you must have either Microsoft PowerPoint or download the free PowerPoint Viewer.

While the recruitement of rural doctors is steadily rising, there is concern about their long-term retention. In response, an orientation course for recently established rural doctors was set up in 2003, based on a training needs assessment. This paper draws lessons from this experience, focusing on processes and mechanisms operating in the relation between training and retention in rural practice. [adapted from author]

This presentation on the domestic training and international recruitment of health workers was offered during a dialogue hosted by the WHO and OECD.

This report reviews the current HRH status in eighteen targeted countries in the Asia-Pacific region. It focuses primarily on health education and training; the distribution and retention of health workers; and community health workers. [adapted from abstract]

Managers are an essential component of the health workforce. Good management is essential for quality service delivery and achieving desired health outcomes. This resource details a balanced, strategic approach to strengthening management capacity. [from introduction]

The PARiHS framework (Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services) has proved to be a useful practical and conceptual heuristic for many researchers and practitioners in framing their research or knowledge translation endeavors. However, as a conceptual framework it still remains untested and therefore its contribution to the overall development and testing of theory in the field of implementation science is largely unquantified.

This paper provides an integrated summary of the conceptual and theoretical thinking thus far regarding PARiHS. It introduces a typology used to distinguish between the terms conceptual framework, theory and model

This report calls for a rapid and significant scaling up of the education and training of health workers as part of a broader effort to strengthen health systems. It highlights the importance of training to meet a country’s own health needs and the great opportunity represented by the increased use of community- and mid-level workers. [from foreword]

There are also two case studies from Ghana and Malawi on strategic implementation of health worker training plans.

Measuring and monitoring the whole education and training pipeline is essential to the planning, management and quality control of the health workforce in a country. This requires timely and reliable data on each of its phases. [from author]