Analysing disrupted health sectors: a modular manual. Module 10: analysing human resources for health
World Health Organization, guidelines
"This manual provides guidance to analysts of health sectors in crisis. The intended users are apprentice analysts, already with field experience, familiar with quantitative techniques, attempting to analyse a disrupted health sector."
Module 10 reviews the many aspects to be considered in the study of a health workforce. It starts with the most common developments witnessed in troubled health sectors. It then discusses the size and composition of the workforce in relation to the population to be served and the healthcare network to be operated. The main features of the workforce of several battered health sectors are summarized, highlighting similarities as well as differences.
Training, attrition, job descriptions, deployment, staffing patterns and staff performance are in turn considered, as is the subject of volunteer health workers, a prominent feature in many protracted crises. Issues related to regulating human resources are touched upon. The role of expatriate staff is briefly covered.
The challenges posed by the integration of formerly rival health workers into a unified workforce are considered. Civil-service and salary provisions and constraints are in turn discussed. The module concludes with a review of strategies to be adopted to restructure a distorted and dilapidated workforce.§