Tools

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]

Safer Place Self-Audit Tool: Combating Violence Against Social Care Staff

This self-audit tool can be used at any management level and is designed to help employers make a quick judgement about whether an organization’s framework for management and practice minimizes the potential for workers to be subject to violence and abuse. The tool also enables a supportive response if incidents occur. [adapted from description]

Standards-Based Management and Recognition: a Field Guide

This field guide is intended to provide some help with the task of improving the delivery of health services using standards of care as the basis for improvement. This guide is designed to answer questions such as: What types of standards are really useful to local providers and mangers? How can they be implemented in a practical way? How can the improvement process be supported?

Guidance for the Health Information Systems (HIS) Strategic Planning Process: Steps, Tools and Templates for HIS Systems Design and Strategic Planning

This document is an early version of procedures for use by national health and statistics constituencies in planning and carrying out the design of strategies and operational plans for strengthening their national health information systems. [from summary]

Health Sytems in Transition: Template for Analysis

This Health Systems in Transition profile is a country-based report that provides a detailed description of a health system and of policy initiatives in progress or under development. It is a template intended to be used in a flexible way to allow authors and editors to adapt it to their particular national context. [adapted from introduction]

Rapid Assessment Tool for Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV Linkages: a Generic Guide

The objective of this adaptable tool is to assess HIV and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) bi-directional linkages at the policy, systems and service-delivery levels. It is intended also to identify gaps, and ultimately contribute to the development of country-specific action plans to forge and strengthen these linkages. It includes assement tools for evaluating staffing, human resources and capacity development (p.32) as well as a checklist for evaluating health workers’ capacity to perform SRH and HIV functions (p.82). [adapted from author]

HRIS Strengthening Implementation Toolkit

This Toolkit provides a package of HRIS procedures and tools to HRH stakeholders, HR information system managers and software developers to facilitate applying the HRIS strengthening processes and iHRIS software developed by the Capacity Project. The Toolkit collects briefs, forms, case studies, resources and other materials to assist with all five steps of the HRIS strengthening process: introduction, building HRIS leadership, assessing and improving existing systems, developing software solutions, using data to make decisions, and ensuring sustainability. [from author]

Key Characteristics of Positive Practice Environments for Health Care Professionals

This document presents a checklist of key characteristics of quality workplaces for health care professionals. It is intended for use by employers, professional organizations, regulatory bodies, government agencies as well as health sector professionals. It is designed as a reference tool to enable these groups to assess the quality of their practice environment, identify any deficiencies and develop strategies to address priority gaps. [adapted from introduction]

Integrated Supervision Checklist

The checklist has been developed to guide those officers who conduct supervision as part of their responsibilities at the various levels of the health delivery system in Malawi. [from author]

Performance-Based Contracting for Health Services in Developing Countries: a Toolkit

This toolkit provides practical advice to anyone involved in, or who is interested in becoming involved in, performance-based contracting of health services with nonstate providers in the context of developing countries. It addresses many of the issues that may be encountered and provides input from experienced contracting professionals, many of whom contributed to the development of this toolkit. [adapted from introduction]

Global Atlas of the Health Workforce

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been collecting and compiling cross-nationally comparable data on health workers in all WHO Member States. The data available in the Global Atlas of the Health Workforce is the main outcome of this effort. Estimates of the stock (absolute numbers) and density (per 1000 population) of the health workforce are available here for 193 Member States. National-level data refer to the active health workforce, that is, all persons currently participating in the health labour market. [adapted from publisher]

12 Steps for Creating a Culture of Retention: a Workbook for Home and Community-Based Long-Term Care Providers

All long-term care agencies struggle to find and keep sufficient, reliable, and skilled staff capable of meeting client needs and providing great quality care. This workbook offers 12 concrete steps to guide agencies in developing excellent recruitment, selection and retention practices

Strengthening Management Capacity

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]

Voluntary Code of Ethical Conduct for the Recruitment of Foreign-Educated Nurses to the United States

The Voluntary Code of Ethical Conduct for the Recruitment of Foreign-Educated Nurses to the United States reflects the mutual recognition of stakeholder interests relevant to the recruitment of foreign educated nurses. It is based on an acknowledgement of the rights of individuals to migrate, as well as an understanding that the legitimate interests and responsibilities of nurses, source countries, and employers in the destination country may conflict. It affirms that a careful balancing of those individual and collective interests offers the best course for maximizing the benefits and reducing the potential harm to all parties.

AVICENNA Directories: Global Directories of Education Institutions for Health Professions

The AVICENNA Directories is a publicly accessible database of schools, colleges, and universities for education of academic professions in health. The database includes medical schools, schools of pharmacy, schools of public health and educational institutions of other academic health professions. For medical educational institutions, this database replaces the World Directory of Medical Schools published by WHO since 1953. [adapted from publisher]

Database of Medical Schools 2005

This database contains listings for medical schools all over the world. Users can search by region or by country to access details about the schools available.

Health Systems Database

This easy-to-use web-based tool compiles and analyzes country data from multiple sources, provides charting options, and generates automated country fact sheets, helping users to assess the performance of the country’s health systems.

Medical Dialogue: How to Kick-Start a Joint AIDS Response by Health Workers and Traditional Healers

This publication provides information on the medical dialogue, a method formulated to address the recommendation for collaboration between biomedical practitioners and traditional healers and the integration of traditional medicine into public health care to respond to AIDS. [adapted from author]

Assessing the Human Resource Capacity for Implementation of the National Plan of Action for Orphans and Vulnerable Children: Process Description and Tool Library

The purpose of this document is to provide a process, methodology and tools for assessing government human resource capacity to lead and manage an effective implementation of the NPA.

Monitoring the Health Workforce: Measurement Issues and Tools

This brief provides a list of facility-based data collection tools that have been developed by the World Health Organization and other partners. The resources can be used to meet a wide range of specific information needs on human resources in health systems. [adapted from summary]

Resource Needs for HIV/AIDS: Model for Estimating Resource Needs for Prevention, Care, and Mitigation

The Resource Needs Model (RNM) calculates the total resources needed for prevention, care, and orphan support for HIV/AIDS on a national level. The RNM can assist national-level strategic planning efforts by providing a tool and methodology to examine the financial resources needed to implement a variety of prevention interventions, care and treatment programs, and orphan support. [adapted from publisher]


Note: View the accompanying manual for instructions for using the model.

Maternity Workforce Resource Pack

This pack contains workforce planning checklists, together with case studies and frequently asked questions (FAQs) that other organisations have developed to solve common issues. This pack includes examples of good practice and the contact details of teams working in maternity services to enable organisations to follow up any issues raised. [from introduction]

Public Health Workforce Development Resource Pack

This resource pack provides a guide for planning this workforce change and ensuring that new structures designed to deliver the public health agenda are built in a way that is sustainable and has a long term focus. It provides a raft of information that will be useful to anyone involved in planning and delivering services – placing the recent policy announcements in context and outlining approaches that may be useful in workforce planning. [from introduction]

Private Health Sector Quality Improvement Package: Implementation Guide for Midwives

This is a QI package for the private sector that includes a review of service statistics, accompanying a QI self-assessment tool for midwives to identify quality issues, and a linked action plan for midwives and supervisors to help solve issues the QI tool identifies. [publisher’s description]

iHRIS Software Suite

The Capacity Project is developing three free and Open Source core software solutions, each addressing a specific human resources for health (HRH) leadership issue: iHRIS Qualify- a training, certification and licensure tracking database; iHRIS Manage- a human resources management system; and iHRIS Plan- workforce planning and modeling software [publisher’s description]

Developing a Competence Framework and Evaluation Tool for Primary Care Nursing in South Africa

Nurses provide the bulk of primary care services in South Africa. Post-apartheid health legislation envisions the provision of comprehensive primary services at all public clinics, which implies the need for a cadre of primary care nurses able to render such services. The objective of this study was to identify core competencies of clinic nurses and develop an evaluation tool for primary care nursing in South Africa. [from abstract]

International Opportunities in Medical Education

The purpose of this electronic resource is to make available information about the extent and nature of international opportunities for medical students, residents, and faculty. It provides information about which schools offer programs, how these are funded, and in which geographical regions they occur. In many cases, individual schools provide further information about their programs on their own websites. [publisher’s description]

International Medical Education Directory

The International Medical Education Directory (IMED) provides an accurate and up-to-date resource of information about international medical schools that are recognized by the appropriate government agency in the countries where the medical schools are located. The agency responsible for this recognition in most countries is the Ministry of Health. Medical schools that are recognized by the appropriate agencies in their respective countries are listed in the International Medical Education Directory. [publisher’s description]

Reviewing and Revising a Training Course

This tool provides a process for periodically reviewing and revising training sessions or courses in a systematic manner. [author’s description]

Supervisor Competency Self-Assessment Inventory

This Self-Assessment Inventory outlines the major areas of competence an effective supervisor must have. The competency areas are sub-divided into categories which correspond to the major functions supervisors perform. Its primary use is as a self-assessment tool. Individuals are encouraged to use it to assess their competence and performance as supervisors and use the results to develop a plan for improvement. This Inventory can also be used as a guide to curriculum development for Supervisory Training, using the components as the basis for a needs assessment exercise. [purpose]