Continuing Education

This study was carried out to document the current situation regarding continued or in-service training opportunities amongst healthcare workers serving in government (public) health centres within Blantyre District Health office. Knowledge of such a situation would better inform health personnel trainers, professional regulatory bodies, the Ministry of Health and international agencies to design appropriate intervention programs towards professional development of healthcare personnel. [from introduction]

As the complexity of the challenges facing the public health workforce has increased, many have argued that insufficient resources have been devoted to the preparation of the workforce, including its leaders. Here we describe the growth of national advocacy for public health leadership and workforce development. We discuss the creation of the National Public Health Leadership Development Network (NLN), a consortium of institutes providing a system for leadership development, and we review the network’s creation of the Leadership Competency Framework for core curriculum design and development of performance standards for public health practice.

This paper combines the literature on public health, on economics of health and on economics of technological innovation to discuss the peculiarities of labour in the health care sector. The health care system has a distinctive characteristic from other economic sectors: it is the intersection between social welfare and innovation systems. The relationship between technological innovation and cost in the health care sector is surveyed. Finally, the Brazilian case is discussed as an example of a developing country. The peculiarities of labour in the health care sector suggest the need to recognize the worth of sectoral labour and to cease to treat it separately.

The standards provide a new framework against which individual doctors and the medical profession can assess themselves in a voluntary self-evaluation and self-improvement process. The standards should form the basis for continuted professional development (CPD) providers in designing CPD activities. Depending on local needs and traditions, the standards can also be used by national or regional agencies engaged in monitoring, recognition, and accreditation of CPD. [from introduction]

One of the challenges of continuing professional development (CPD) is to ensure that members of the medical profession maintain and improve the competencies in medical practice. CPD is an evolving system and different countries in Africa are at different levels of development. This article focuses on the developments and challenges of CPD among medical and dental practitioners in Africa. [abstract]

To ensure the quality of health care provided by the private practitioners, there is need to continuously improve their skills and knowledge through Continuing Medical Education (CME), support supervision and provision of updated standard guidelines. This guide provides trainers and supervisors of private health care providers a simplified, practical, evidence base and negotiated approach to improved child health care by private providers. [adapted from foreword]

This report summarizes a UK-wide survey to find out what information nurses, health visitors,midwives and health care assistants need to support their practice and lifelong learning. [adapted from author]

In line with government initiatives, this series of studies was undertaken to establish the training and development needs of nurses and midwives working within a variety of contexts in Indonesia, with the ultimate aim of enhancing care provision within these domains. [from abstract]

Modernising Medical Careers is a wide-ranging programme that is set to reform every aspect of a doctor’s career. The programme aims to improve patient care by delivering a modernised and focused career structure for doctors through a major reform of postgraduate medical education. The impact of this reform will be felt in service delivery, workforce planning and development. The aim of this workforce planning resource pack is to provide useful background information as well as practical examples, which illustrate the potential workforce implications of the changes. This pack is aimed at all staff involved in planning the workforce.

The objective of this study was to assess the supply of physicians in Lebanon in 1998, with an assessment of their practice patterns and capacity building. [from abstract]

This paper aims to provide an overview of the current evidence and opinion of the workforce implications of regulation, competency development and role definition. These three elements are inextricably linked to each other and are fundamental to the practice of nursing in today’s environment. [from introduction]

A number of missions were carried by WHO during 1995 in the central Asian republics (CAR) to investigate the status of staffing and training in environmental health services in these countries. As a follow-up to these missions, a workshop on staffing, professional education and training needs in environmental health services for the CAR was held in Bishkek. This workshop explored issues relating to the development of environmental health services on which the CAR could collaborate on professional education research and common international issues. Participants made recommendations for future collaboration in developing the professional and institutional capacities of environmental health services in the CAR.

This course in Training Methods and Continuing Education for Health Workers identifies the role of training and continuing education as an important component of health service and personnel management. Participants will be guided through the steps of planning training and continuing education activities for a range of health workers from managers to village volunteers. The course draws on real life examples from community-directed onchocerciasis control, village health worker programs, and patent medicine vendor training programs, to name a few. [publisher’s description]

The long-term objective of this paper is to galvanize action to ensure that all current and future health managers are well prepared to lead and manage to achieve results. With good preparation, they will be able to develop and manage the kind of health services that achieve health goals, reduce illness, and save lives. [author’s description]

This study indicates that healthcare professionals are using mostly clinical handover meetings, seminars and workshops for their continued professional development (CPD). There is need to improve access to relevant professional journals. The regulatory or licensing boards for healthcare professionals in Malawi should seriously consider mandatory CPD credits for re-certification. [author’s description]