Articles

Bridging the human resource gap in surgical and anesthesia care in low-resource countries: a review of the task sharing literature

Task sharing, the involvement of non-specialists (non-physician clinicians or non-specialist physicians) in performing tasks originally reserved for surgeons and anesthesiologists, can be a potent strategy in ...

Authors: Tigistu Ashengo, Alena Skeels, Elizabeth J. H. Hurwitz, Eric Thuo and Harshad Sanghvi

Correction to: a comparison of physician emigration from Africa to the United States of America between 2005 and 2015

Authors: Robbert J. Duvivier, Vanessa C. Burch and John R. Boulet

Family effects on the rurality of GP’s work location: a longitudinal panel study

Reduced opportunities for children’s schooling and spouse’s/partner’s employment are identified internationally as key barriers to general practitioners (GPs) working rurally. This paper aims to measure longit...

Authors: Matthew R. McGrail, Deborah J. Russell and Belinda G. O’Sullivan

Is there a financial incentive to immigrate? Examining of the health worker salary gap between India and popular destination countries

International migration is one of the factors resulting in the shortage of Human Resources for Health (HRH) in India. Literature suggests that migration is fuelled by the prospect of higher salaries available ...

Authors: Gavin George and Bruce Rhodes

Opportunities for human resources for health and rehabilitation: a response to Jesus et al.

We welcome Jesus et al.’s paper, which makes an important contribution to the under-researched area of the physical rehabilitation workforce. The authors present recommendations to “advance a policy and resear...

Authors: Jessica Power, Joanne McVeigh, Brynne Gilmore and Malcolm MacLachlan

One Health/EcoHealth capacity building programs in South and South East Asia: a mixed method rapid systematic review

Although One Health (OH) or EcoHealth (EH) have been acknowledged to provide comprehensive and holistic approaches to study complex problems, like zoonoses and emerging infectious diseases, there remains multi...

Authors: Pranab Chatterjee, Abhimanyu Singh Chauhan, Jessy Joseph and Manish Kakkar

Perspectives and experiences of community health workers in Brazilian primary care centers using m-health tools in home visits with community members

Mobile health (m-health) tools are a promising strategy to facilitate the work of community health workers (CHWs) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Despite their potential value, little is known abo...

Authors: Julia Schoen, John William Mallett, Rebecca Grossman-Kahn, Alexandra Brentani, Elizabeth Kaselitz and Michele Heisler

Factors influencing trainee doctor emigration in a high income country: a mixed methods study

The Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel focuses particularly on migration of doctors from low- and middle-income countries. Less is understood about migration from high...

Authors: Nicholas Clarke, Sophie Crowe, Niamh Humphries, Ronan Conroy, Simon O’Hare, Paul Kavanagh and Ruairi Brugha

A study of human resource competencies required to implement community rehabilitation in less resourced settings

It is estimated that over one billion persons worldwide have some form of disability. However, there is lack of knowledge and prioritisation of how to serve the needs and provide opportunities for people with ...

Authors: Brynne Gilmore, Malcolm MacLachlan, Joanne McVeigh, Chiedza McClean, Stuart Carr, Antony Duttine, Hasheem Mannan, Eilish McAuliffe, Gubela Mji, Arne H. Eide, Karl-Gerhard Hem and Neeru Gupta

Human resources for health in Peru: recent trends (2007–2013) in the labour market for physicians, nurses and midwives

Most analyses of gaps in human resources for health (HRH) do not consider training and the transition of graduates into the labour market. This study aims to explore the labour market for Peru’s recent medical...

Authors: M. Michelle Jimenez, Anthony L. Bui, Eduardo Mantilla and J. Jaime Miranda

Improving the performance of community health workers in Swaziland: findings from a qualitative study

The performance of community health workers (CHWs) in Swaziland has not yet been studied despite the existence of a large national CHW program in the country. This qualitative formative research study aimed to...

Authors: Pascal Geldsetzer, Jan-Walter De Neve, Chantelle Boudreaux, Till Bärnighausen and Thomas J. Bossert

Physicians’ perceptions on the impact of telemedicine on recruitment and retention in underserved areas: a descriptive study in Senegal

Similar to many places, physicians in Senegal are unevenly distributed. Telemedicine is considered a potential solution to this problem. This study investigated the perceptions of Senegal’s physicians of the i...

Authors: Birama Apho Ly, Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, Ronald Labonté and Mbayang Ndiaye Niang

Professional fulfillment and parenting work-life balance in female physicians in Basic Sciences and medical research: a nationwide cross-sectional survey of all 80 medical schools in Japan

In Japan, the field of Basic Sciences encompasses clinical, academic, and translational research, as well as the teaching of medical sciences, with both an MD and PhD typically required. In this study, it was ...

Authors: Yuka Yamazaki, Takanori Uka and Eiji Marui

Forecasting the regional distribution and sufficiency of physicians in Japan with a coupled system dynamics—geographic information system model

In Japan, the shortage of physicians has been recognized as a major medical issue. In our previous study, we reported that the absolute shortage will be resolved in the long term, but maldistribution among spe...

Authors: Tomoki Ishikawa, Kensuke Fujiwara, Hisateru Ohba, Teppei Suzuki and Katsuhiko Ogasawara

The impact of the advanced practice nursing role on quality of care, clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction, and cost in the emergency and critical care settings: a systematic review

The prevalence of chronic illness and multimorbidity rises with population aging, thereby increasing the acuity of care. Consequently, the demand for emergency and critical care services has increased. However...

Authors: Brigitte Fong Yeong Woo, Jasmine Xin Yu Lee and Wilson Wai San Tam

The impact of austerity on the health workforce and the achievement of human resources for health policies in Ireland (2008–2014)

The global economic crisis saw recessionary conditions in most EU countries. Ireland’s severe recession produced pro-cyclical health spending cuts. Yet, human resources for health (HRH) are the most critical o...

Authors: Des Williams and Steve Thomas

Job satisfaction and turnover intentions among health care staff providing services for prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Option B+ for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV (i.e., lifelong antiretroviral treatment for all pregnant and breastfeeding mothers living with HIV) was initiated in Tanzania in 201...

Authors: Helga Naburi, Phares Mujinja, Charles Kilewo, Nicola Orsini, Till Bärnighausen, Karim Manji, Gunnel Biberfeld, David Sando, Pascal Geldsetzer, Guerino Chalamila and Anna Mia Ekström

Understanding the factors affecting the attraction and retention of health professionals in rural and remote areas: a mixed-method study in Niger

The critical shortage of human resources in health is a critical public health problem affecting most low- and middle-income countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to the shortage of health...

Authors: Loubna Belaid, Christian Dagenais, Mahaman Moha and Valéry Ridde

Performance of community health workers: situating their intermediary position within complex adaptive health systems

Health systems are social institutions, in which health worker performance is shaped by transactional processes between different actors.

Authors: Maryse C. Kok, Jacqueline E. W. Broerse, Sally Theobald, Hermen Ormel, Marjolein Dieleman and Miriam Taegtmeyer

The impact of a supportive supervision intervention on health workers in Niassa, Mozambique: a cluster-controlled trial

Regular supportive supervision is critical to retaining and motivating staff in resource-constrained settings. Previous studies have shown the particular contribution that supportive supervision can make to im...

Authors: Tavares Madede, Mohsin Sidat, Eilish McAuliffe, Sergio Rogues Patricio, Ogenna Uduma, Marie Galligan, Susan Bradley and Isabel Cambe

The impact of a human resource management intervention on the capacity of supervisors to support and supervise their staff at health facility level

A systematic and structured approach to the support and supervision of health workers can strengthen the human resource management function at the district and health facility levels and may help address the c...

Authors: Ogenna Uduma, Marie Galligan, Henry Mollel, Honorati Masanja, Susan Bradley and Eilish McAuliffe

Distribution of health care resources in Mongolia using the Gini coefficient

Attaining the perfect balance of health care resources is probably impracticable; however, it is possible to achieve improvements in the distribution of these resources. In terms of the distribution of health ...

Authors: Oyunchimeg Erdenee, Sekar Ayu Paramita, Chiho Yamazaki and Hiroshi Koyama

The paradox of falling job satisfaction with rising job stickiness in the German nursing workforce between 1990 and 2013

Literature reports a direct relation between nurses’ job satisfaction and their job retention (stickiness). The proper planning and management of the nursing labor market necessitates the understanding of job ...

Authors: Mohamad Alameddine, Jan Michael Bauer, Martin Richter and Alfonso Sousa-Poza

Sharing Histories—a transformative learning/teaching method to empower community health workers to support health behavior change of mothers

One of the keys to improving health globally is promoting mothers’ adoption of healthy home practices for improved nutrition and illness prevention in the first 1000 days of life from conception. Customarily, ...

Authors: Laura C. Altobelli

Non-physician clinicians in rural Africa: lessons from the Medical Licentiate programme in Zambia

Most sub-Saharan African countries struggle to make safe surgery accessible to rural populations due to a shortage of qualified surgeons and the unlikelihood of retaining them in district hospitals. In 2002, Z...

Authors: Jakub Gajewski, Carol Mweemba, Mweene Cheelo, Tracey McCauley, John Kachimba, Eric Borgstein, Leon Bijlmakers and Ruairi Brugha

Patterns of resident health workforce turnover and retention in remote communities of the Northern Territory of Australia, 2013–2015

The geographical maldistribution of the health workforce is a persisting global issue linked to inequitable access to health services and poorer health outcomes for rural and remote populations. In the Norther...

Authors: Deborah J Russell, Yuejen Zhao, Steven Guthridge, Mark Ramjan, Michael P Jones, John S Humphreys and John Wakerman

The evolution of the national licensing system of health care professionals: a qualitative descriptive case study in Lao People’s Democratic Republic

The introduction of a systematic framework for the licensing of health care professions, which is a crucial step in ensuring the quality of human resources for health (HRH), is still evolving in Lao People’s D...

Authors: Miwa Sonoda, Bounkong Syhavong, Chanphomma Vongsamphanh, Phisith Phoutsavath, Phengdy Inthapanith, Arie Rotem and Noriko Fujita

Coping and compromise: a qualitative study of how primary health care providers respond to health reform in China

Health reform in China since 2009 has emphasized basic public health services to enhance the function of Community Health Services as a primary health care facility. A variety of studies have documented these ...

Authors: Mingji Zhang, Wei Wang, Ross Millar, Guohong Li and Fei Yan

The gap in human resources to deliver the guaranteed package of prevention and health promotion services at urban and rural primary care facilities in Mexico

The purpose of this study was to estimate the gap between the available and the ideal supply of human resources (physicians, nurses, and health promoters) to deliver the guaranteed package of prevention and he...

Authors: Jacqueline Elizabeth Alcalde-Rabanal, Gustavo Nigenda, Till Bärnighausen, Héctor Eduardo Velasco-Mondragón and Blair Grant Darney

Cross-sectional description of nursing and midwifery pre-service education accreditation in east, central, and southern Africa in 2013

In 2013, the World Health Organization issued guidelines, Transforming and Scaling Up Health Professional Education and Training, to improve the quality and relevance of health professional pre-service education....

Authors: Carey F. McCarthy, Jessica M. Gross, Andre R. Verani, Annette M. Nkowane, Erica L. Wheeler, Thokozire J. Lipato and Maureen A. Kelley

The Human Resources for Health Effort Index: a tool to assess and inform Strategic Health Workforce Investments

Despite its importance, the field of human resources for health (HRH) has lagged in developing methods to measure its status and progress in low- and middle-income countries suffering a workforce crisis. Measu...

Authors: Alfredo L. Fort, Rachel Deussom, Randi Burlew, Kate Gilroy and David Nelson

The ‘Dream Team’ for sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent health: an adjusted service target model to estimate the ideal mix of health care professionals to cover population need

A competent, enabled and efficiently deployed health workforce is crucial to the achievement of the health-related sustainable development goals (SDGs). Methods for workforce planning have tended to focus on ‘...

Authors: Petra ten Hoope-Bender, Andrea Nove, Laura Sochas, Zoë Matthews, Caroline S. E. Homer and Francisco Pozo-Martin

Harmonizing community-based health worker programs for HIV: a narrative review and analytic framework

Many countries have created community-based health worker (CHW) programs for HIV. In most of these countries, several national and non-governmental initiatives have been implemented raising questions of how we...

Authors: Jan-Walter De Neve, Chantelle Boudreaux, Roopan Gill, Pascal Geldsetzer, Maria Vaikath, Till Bärnighausen and Thomas J. Bossert

How female community health workers navigate work challenges and why there are still gaps in their performance: a look at female community health workers in maternal and child health in two Indian districts through a reciprocal determinism framework

Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) are community health workers tasked to deliver health prevention in communities and link them with the health care sector. This paper examines the social, cultural, a...

Authors: Enisha Sarin and Sarah Smith Lunsford

What will make a difference? Assessing the impact of policy and non-policy scenarios on estimations of the future GP workforce

Health workforce planning is based on estimates of future needs for and supply of health care services. Given the pipeline time lag for the training of health professionals, inappropriate workforce planning or...

Authors: Caroline O. M. Laurence and Jonathan Karnon

Knowledge, attitudes, and values among physicians working with clinical genomics: a survey of medical oncologists

It has been over a decade since the completion of the Human Genome Project (HGP), genomic sequencing technologies have yet to become parts of standard of care in Canada. This study investigates medical oncolog...

Authors: Peter Chow-White, Dung Ha and Janessa Laskin

A comparison of physician emigration from Africa to the United States of America between 2005 and 2015

Migration of health professionals has been a cause for global concern, in particular migration from African countries with a high disease burden and already fragile health systems. An estimated one fifth of Af...

Authors: Robbert J. Duvivier, Vanessa C. Burch and John R. Boulet

An exploration of facilitators and challenges in the scale-up of a national, public sector community health worker cadre in Zambia: a qualitative study

In 2010 a public sector cadre of community health workers called Community Health Assistants (CHAs) was created in Zambia through the National Community Health Worker Strategy to expand access to health servic...

Authors: Sydney Chauwa Phiri, Margaret Lippitt Prust, Caroline Phiri Chibawe, Ronald Misapa, Jan Willem van den Broek and Nikhil Wilmink

A continuous quality improvement intervention to improve the effectiveness of community health workers providing care to mothers and children: a cluster randomised controlled trial in South Africa

Community health workers (CHWs) play key roles in delivering health programmes in many countries worldwide. CHW programmes can improve coverage of maternal and child health services for the most disadvantaged ...

Authors: Christiane Horwood, Lisa Butler, Pierre Barker, Sifiso Phakathi, Lyn Haskins, Merridy Grant, Ntokozo Mntambo and Nigel Rollins

Credentialing and retention of visa trainees in post-graduate medical education programs in Canada

Visa trainees are international medical graduates (IMG) who come to Canada to train in a post-graduate medical education (PGME) program under a student or employment visa and are expected to return to their co...

Authors: Maria Mathews, Rima Kandar, Steve Slade, Yanqing Yi, Sue Beardall, Ivy Bourgeault and Lynda Buske

Occupational therapy and physiotherapy education and workforce in Anglophone sub-Saharan Africa countries

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries are faced with the challenge of educating a critical mass of occupational therapists (OTs) and physiotherapists (PTs) to meet the growing demand for health and rehabilitation...

Authors: Augustine O. Agho and Emmanuel B. John

Health professionals’ job satisfaction and associated factors at public health centers in West Ethiopia

Human resources are vital for delivering health services, and health systems cannot function effectively without sufficient numbers of skilled, motivated, and well-supported health workers. Job satisfaction of...

Authors: Beyazin Kebede Deriba, Shimele Ololo Sinke, Berhane Megersa Ereso and Abebe Sorsa Badacho

The potential of task-shifting in scaling up services for prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV: a time and motion study in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

In many African countries, prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) services are predominantly delivered by nurses. Although task-shifting is not yet well established, community health workers...

Authors: Helga Naburi, Anna Mia Ekström, Phares Mujinja, Charles Kilewo, Karim Manji, Gunnel Biberfeld, David Sando, Guerino Chalamila and Till Bärnighausen

Nurses who work in rural and remote communities in Canada: a national survey

In Canada, as in other parts of the world, there is geographic maldistribution of the nursing workforce, and insufficient attention is paid to the strengths and needs of those providing care in rural and remot...

Authors: Martha L. P. MacLeod, Norma J. Stewart, Judith C. Kulig, Penny Anguish, Mary Ellen Andrews, Davina Banner, Leana Garraway, Neil Hanlon, Chandima Karunanayake, Kelley Kilpatrick, Irene Koren, Julie Kosteniuk, Ruth Martin-Misener, Nadine Mix, Pertice Moffitt, Janna Olynick…

Measuring health workers’ motivation composition: validation of a scale based on Self-Determination Theory in Burkina Faso

Although motivation of health workers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has become a topic of increasing interest by policy makers and researchers in recent years, many aspects are not well understoo...

Authors: Julia Lohmann, Aurélia Souares, Justin Tiendrebéogo, Nathalie Houlfort, Paul Jacob Robyn, Serge M. A. Somda and Manuela De Allegri

Health workforce and governance: the crisis in Nigeria

In Nigeria, several challenges have been reported within the health sector, especially in training, funding, employment, and deployment of the health workforce. We aimed to review recent health workforce crise...

Authors: Davies Adeloye, Rotimi Adedeji David, Adenike Ayobola Olaogun, Asa Auta, Adedapo Adesokan, Muktar Gadanya, Jacob Kehinde Opele, Oluwafemi Owagbemi and Alexander Iseolorunkanmi

Predictors of job satisfaction among nurses working in Ethiopian public hospitals, 2014: institution-based cross-sectional study

Nurses play a pivotal role in determining the efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability of health care systems. Nurses’ job satisfaction plays an important role in the delivery of quality health care. Ther...

Authors: Ayele Semachew, Tefera Belachew, Temamen Tesfaye and Yohannes Mehretie Adinew

Long working hours in the healthcare system of the Belo Horizonte municipality, Brazil: a population-based cross-sectional survey

Health personnel are key players in developing and improving healthcare systems, caring for individuals and their communities, and helping improve quality of life. However, these professionals are often expose...

Authors: Juliana M. Andrade, Ada A. Assunção and Mery N. S. Abreu

Does task shifting yield cost savings and improve efficiency for health systems? A systematic review of evidence from low-income and middle-income countries

Task shifting has become an increasingly popular way to increase access to health services, especially in low-resource settings. Research has demonstrated that task shifting, including the use of community hea...

Authors: Gabriel Seidman and Rifat Atun

Causes, consequences, and policy responses to the migration of health workers: key findings from India

This study sought to better understand the drivers of skilled health professional migration, its consequences, and the various strategies countries have employed to mitigate its negative impacts. The study was...

Authors: Margaret Walton-Roberts, Vivien Runnels, S. Irudaya Rajan, Atul Sood, Sreelekha Nair, Philomina Thomas, Corinne Packer, Adrian MacKenzie, Gail Tomblin Murphy, Ronald Labonté and Ivy Lynn Bourgeault