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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
BACKGROUND: 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 ‘one size fits all’ benchmarks, but because populations vary in terms of their d...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5496136/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28676120 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12960-017-0221-4 |
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author | ten Hoope-Bender, Petra Nove, Andrea Sochas, Laura Matthews, Zoë Homer, Caroline S. E. Pozo-Martin, Francisco |
author_facet | ten Hoope-Bender, Petra Nove, Andrea Sochas, Laura Matthews, Zoë Homer, Caroline S. E. Pozo-Martin, Francisco |
author_sort | ten Hoope-Bender, Petra |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: 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 ‘one size fits all’ benchmarks, but because populations vary in terms of their demography (e.g. fertility rates) and epidemiology (e.g. HIV prevalence), the level of need for sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent health (SRMNAH) workers also varies, as does the ideal composition of the workforce. In this paper, we aim to provide proof of concept for a new method of workforce planning which takes into account these variations, and allocates tasks to SRMNAH workers according to their competencies, so countries can assess not only the needed size of the SRMNAH workforce, but also its ideal composition (the ‘Dream Team’). METHODS: An adjusted service target model was developed, to estimate (i) the amount of health worker time needed to deliver essential SRMNAH care, and (ii) how many workers from different cadres would be required to meet this need if tasks were allocated according to competencies. The model was applied to six low- and middle-income countries, which varied in terms of current levels of need for health workers, geographical location and stage of economic development: Azerbaijan, Malawi, Myanmar, Peru, Uzbekistan and Zambia. RESULTS: Countries with high rates of fertility and/or HIV need more SRMNAH workers (e.g. Malawi and Zambia each need 44 per 10,000 women of reproductive age, compared with 20–27 in the other four countries). All six countries need between 1.7 and 1.9 midwives per 175 births, i.e. more than the established 1 per 175 births benchmark. CONCLUSIONS: There is a need to move beyond universal benchmarks for SRMNAH workforce planning, by taking into account demography and epidemiology. The number and range of workers needed varies according to context. Allocation of tasks according to health worker competencies represents an efficient way to allocate resources and maximise quality of care, and therefore will be useful for countries working towards SDG targets. Midwives/nurse-midwives who are educated according to established global standards can meet 90% or more of the need, if they are part of a wider team operating within an enabled environment. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5496136 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-54961362017-07-05 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 ten Hoope-Bender, Petra Nove, Andrea Sochas, Laura Matthews, Zoë Homer, Caroline S. E. Pozo-Martin, Francisco Hum Resour Health Methodology BACKGROUND: 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 ‘one size fits all’ benchmarks, but because populations vary in terms of their demography (e.g. fertility rates) and epidemiology (e.g. HIV prevalence), the level of need for sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent health (SRMNAH) workers also varies, as does the ideal composition of the workforce. In this paper, we aim to provide proof of concept for a new method of workforce planning which takes into account these variations, and allocates tasks to SRMNAH workers according to their competencies, so countries can assess not only the needed size of the SRMNAH workforce, but also its ideal composition (the ‘Dream Team’). METHODS: An adjusted service target model was developed, to estimate (i) the amount of health worker time needed to deliver essential SRMNAH care, and (ii) how many workers from different cadres would be required to meet this need if tasks were allocated according to competencies. The model was applied to six low- and middle-income countries, which varied in terms of current levels of need for health workers, geographical location and stage of economic development: Azerbaijan, Malawi, Myanmar, Peru, Uzbekistan and Zambia. RESULTS: Countries with high rates of fertility and/or HIV need more SRMNAH workers (e.g. Malawi and Zambia each need 44 per 10,000 women of reproductive age, compared with 20–27 in the other four countries). All six countries need between 1.7 and 1.9 midwives per 175 births, i.e. more than the established 1 per 175 births benchmark. CONCLUSIONS: There is a need to move beyond universal benchmarks for SRMNAH workforce planning, by taking into account demography and epidemiology. The number and range of workers needed varies according to context. Allocation of tasks according to health worker competencies represents an efficient way to allocate resources and maximise quality of care, and therefore will be useful for countries working towards SDG targets. Midwives/nurse-midwives who are educated according to established global standards can meet 90% or more of the need, if they are part of a wider team operating within an enabled environment. BioMed Central 2017-07-04 /pmc/articles/PMC5496136/ /pubmed/28676120 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12960-017-0221-4 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Methodology ten Hoope-Bender, Petra Nove, Andrea Sochas, Laura Matthews, Zoë Homer, Caroline S. E. Pozo-Martin, Francisco 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 |
title | 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 |
title_full | 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 |
title_fullStr | 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 |
title_full_unstemmed | 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 |
title_short | 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 |
title_sort | ‘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 |
topic | Methodology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5496136/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28676120 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12960-017-0221-4 |
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