Preservice Education

Human resources for health are critical for effective health systems. In Africa, the number of doctors and nurses required to provide essential health services will be deficient by an estimated 800,000 in 2015. Numerous interventions have been implemented to mitigate these shortages; tracking graduates from African universities is critical to determine whether interventions are effective. Based on a community of practice theory, a Graduate Tracking Technical Working Group was established within the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) network. The group, with CapacityPlus, developed graduate tracking requirements for MEPI institutions and countries through a collaborative process. A framework was created to guide the establishment of graduate tracking systems consisting of seven core processes or elements: 1) general requirements; 2) locate graduates; 3) collect/update information; 4) search and view information; 5) create tracking survey tools; 6) manage tracking survey response data; and 7) generate reports. CapacityPlus’s Dykki Settle contributed to this article in the journal’s MEPI supplement issue.

Whose Job Is It?

This presentation guided an interactive roundtable discussion at the CapacityPlus knowledge-sharing and dissemination event, Supporting Country-Led Efforts to Recruit and Retain Health Workers and Improve Their Productivity, held on February 18, 2014, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

In an environment of limited resources, educational institutions must be creative in finding financial resources. This free eLearning course provides an overview of creative financing mechanisms designed to help a health professional education institution reach its funding goals. Participants will learn how to select, prioritize, and implement new financing mechanisms.

Countries need to rapidly scale up the production of health workers in order to ensure universal access to health care and address the global shortage of over four million doctors, nurses, midwives, and support workers. In many cases, small but targeted investments in the preservice education of health workers can lead to measurable increases in the production of qualified and competent graduates. This technical brief presents an overview of an approach to help identify critical bottlenecks to providing quality preservice education and prioritize affordable actions for increasing the quantity of graduates while maintaining or improving the quality of education.