Monitoring & Evaluation

This document is an introduction to the optimizing performance and quality process for analyzing the performance of health workers, organizations, and systems, and setting up interventions to improve performance and quality or build on strengths and successes. [adapted from author]

This free online course provides a basic introduction to monitoring and evaluation concepts and how they apply to the field of human resources for health to inform evidence-based planning and decision-making. [from publisher]

This study aimed to examine attitudes of different health workers’ groups toward immigrant patients and to identify the associated factors. [from abstract]

Building on medical education and social psychology literature, the authors identified several factors that may influence change in response to multi-source feedback, which offers doctors feedback on their performance from peers (medical colleagues), coworkers and patients. [adapted from abstract]

This study focused on female Japanese physicians and addressed factors that were associated with their empathic engagement in patient care. [from abstract]

The paper develops a framework for designing and implementing healthcare delivery innovations aimed at making markets work better for poor people. Focusing on the social contract between providers and users, it reviews several arrangements that have emerged, with a particular focus on the providers largely used by the poor. [from publisher]

This study sought to understand what the field of mHealth had to offer, to explore how mHealth is implemented in practice and to use these two sources of information to reflect on the lessons and implications for implementing mHealth at scale for monitoring and evaluation of community based services and community health workers. [adapted from summary]

This survey tests the use of employee engagement concepts in United States Agency for International Development-assisted countries to measure and improve health worker performance, productivity, and retention. [adapted from author]

This report is the World Health Organization’s annual compilation of health-related data for its 194 Member States1 and includes a summary of the progress made towards achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals and associated targets. This year, it also includes highlight summaries on the topics of noncommunicable diseases, universal health coverage and civil registration coverage. [from introduction]

This baseline assessment of HIV/AIDS service providers gathered information on productivity and engagement to develop a set of improved human resource practices that will be integrated into ongoing HIV service delivery. [adapted from summary]

This monitoring and evaluation framework shows how health inputs and processes (e.g. health workforce) are reflected in outputs (e.g. available services) that are reflected in outcomes (e.g. coverage) and impact (morbidity and mortality). It addresses monitoring and evaluation needs for different users and multiple purposes and is structured around the WHO framework that describes health systems in terms of six core components: service delivery, health workforce, health information systems, access to essential medicines, financing, and leadership/governance. [adapted from author]

This systematic review investigates what helps and hinders routine outcome measurement of allied health professionals practice. [from abstract]

There is a global need to assess physicians’ professional performance in actual clinical practice. This study focuses on the reliability and validity, the influences of some sociodemographic biasing factors, associations between self and other evaluations, and the number of evaluations needed for reliable assessment of a physician based on the three instruments used for the multisource assessment of physicians’ professional performance in the Netherlands. [from abstract]

This report summarizes the findings of a qualitative study on health workers’ performance and career in Rwanda to identify bottlenecks, strengths and shortcomings for human resources in the health sector, as perceived by both health workers and users of health services. [adapted from summary]

This document allows medical schools in low-resource areas to get a sense of where they are on the road towards greater social accountability and in their ability to increase impact on health and health services. [adapted from author]

The objective of this study was to compare compliance with national paediatric HIV treatment guidelines between nurse prescribers and doctors at a paediatric referral centre in Gaborone, Botswana. [from author]

The purpose of this study was to describe and compare the quality of nursing service and care in three health districts in the KwaZulu Natal Province and to identify deficiencies which could be addressed by education and training for nurses. [adapted from abstract]

This study explored primary health care staff’s perception, challenges and needs pertaining to the identification of children with tuberculosis in Muheza district in Tanzania. [from abstract]

This paper uses ethnographic methods to document health workers’ antenatal care practices with reference to the national Focused Antenatal Care guidelines and identifies factors influencing health workers’ performance. Potential implications for improving antenatal care provision in Tanzania are discussed. [from abstract]

A study from rural Tanzania shows that health workers usually don’t do the investigations that are required to identify some of the deadly illnesses that could be diagnosed and treat. [adapted from author]

This brief reports the main results from a study aiming to compare worker effort levels in church-based and government health clinics in Tanzania. [from author]

This article aimed to quantify how nurses distribute their time across tasks, with patients, in individual tasks, and engagement with other health care providers; and how work patterns changed over a two year period.

Comparisons of patient experiences between providers are increasingly used as an index of provider performance. This study describes the ability of patient experience surveys to discriminate between healthcare providers for various patient groups and quality aspects, and reports the sample sizes required for reliable comparisons of provider scores. [adapted from abstract]

This guide is intended for health-care workers, program managers and policy-makers who are responsible for the quality of maternal health care within a health-care facility or of the entire health system. It presents a standard approach for monitoring the implementation of critical interventions in maternal health care and proposes a systematic process for assessing the quality of care. In its entirety, the included methods and related processes constitute the WHO maternal near-miss approach. [from introduction]

This report uses a human rights framework to examine accountability for maternal health care. It sets out several specific steps that South African and Eastern Cape governments should take to better integrate accountability into maternal health care programs and ensure their implementation through the health system. [from author]

This paper describes an initiative to create a framework to analyze the field of human resources for health (HRH) in Latin America and the Caribbean, more specifically the development of a set of metrics and indicators to be used in monitoring HRH policies in the region. [adapted from author]

This research evaluates the potential effect of job motivation, learning and self-assessment through performance appraisals for health personnel. [from introduction]

The explicit need to focus on quality of care underpins the aim of this study to evaluate the safety culture and teamwork climate in the public maternity units of the 5 regional hospitals in Cyprus as measured by a validated safety attitudes tool. [from abstract]

In order to gain a general picture of the intercultural challenges faced by Geneva physicians and inform the development of targeted training activities, we conducted a large-scale survey of physicians’ and medical students’ knowledge, attitudes and skills related to care of immigrant patients. This paper reports on respondents’ self-assessments of their clinical and intercultural skills. [from author]

This compendium provides a list of published indicators on human resources for health (HRH) organized according to the results framework of the CapacityPlus project. The objective of this compendium is to provide a tool for HRH systems strengthening practitioners interested in monitoring HRH projects and programs.