Tools and Resources
Compendium of Approaches and Tools for Expanding High-Quality Health Workforce Education and Training
This compendium categorizes and describes approaches and tools that national stakeholders can use to address common challenges in expanding high-quality education and training. It lists sources of globally-recognized, evidence-based guidelines and recommendations for scaling up and transforming health professional education. It then suggests resources to support the implementation of those recommendations, categorized in relation to the health workforce production pipeline framework.
Dean's Dashboard
Dean's Dashboard Software, Manual, User Support, and Case Studies
The Dean’s Dashboard is a free, computerized, open source tool that helps the leaders of educational institutions manage their schools more efficiently. The dashboard allows school leaders to systematically define strategic, indicator-based goals for their educational programs and routinely monitor progress toward achieving them. Charts and graphs created and monitored on the dashboard can be easily saved, shared, and integrated into presentations, brochures, websites, and other key management materials. A school’s management team can download and customize the standard dashboard linked to this page, or build their own customized dashboard using the most recent version of the powerful DHIS2 software. The step-by-step user’s manual and DHIS2 expert community provide guidance and support to install, customize, and maximize the use of the dashboard for data-driven decision making.
Estimating the Institutional Costs of Educating and Training Health Workers: Preservice Education Costing Methodology and Instruments
Preservice Education Costing Study Methodology
CapacityPlus designed a costing study approach to: 1) estimate the financial costs to an educational institution and its associated clinical practice facilities of producing a graduate of a specific academic program; 2) identify the resource constraints to producing sufficient numbers of quality graduates; and 3) simulate the potential new unit cost to the educational institution and its associated clinical practice facilities if a scenario of interventions were introduced to increase the quantity and/or quality of graduates. The approach applies an Excel-based costing model and data collection instruments to analyze preservice education costing data derived from information about enrollment levels, curriculum data, school expenditures, payroll, available infrastructure and equipment, and others. Read more »
Health Informatics Education and Training Programs: Important Factors to Consider
CapacityPlus Technical Brief #10 (PDF)
CapacityPlus Technical Brief #10 (Interactive Version)
Health informatics is of growing importance in efforts to improve health outcomes across the globe, involving many components of health systems. It is primarily concerned with the process of making health-related data accessible and useful for evidence-based decision-making. To take advantage of the potential advantages offered by health informatics, health workers must be able to access relevant data and be comfortable with its application. Therefore, preservice education and in-service training in information technology should be part of the national investment in health systems. This technical brief introduces the concept of health informatics and describes the considerations to be kept in mind when designing education and training programs for health informatics.
Health Professional School Leadership and Health Sector Reform, Performance, and Practice
CapacityPlus Technical Brief #14 (PDF)
CapacityPlus Technical Brief #14 (Interactive Version)
In the transition to the post-Millennium Development Goals era, many low and middle-income countries will be making significant shifts in their national health policies. The leadership that is drawn upon to make policy changes tends to be in ministries of health, flagship hospitals, physicians and nurses associations, and social protection entities. Health professional schools are an additional and valuable—yet often overlooked—source of leadership in health reform and health policy-making. This technical brief highlights some examples of how the education and research leadership of health professional schools has engaged, influenced, or obtained resources from national policy-makers and others with significant influence on the health sector. The brief also reviews instances in which different health educational institutions and professional associations have worked to shape national responses to health system needs.
iHRIS Train: An Open Source Tool for Managing Health Worker Training
An overview of iHRIS Train, open source software for managing data on the education of health professionals. iHRIS Train is part of the iHRIS software for health workforce management.
Innovative Financing Options for the Preservice Education of Health Professionals
CapacityPlus Technical Brief #8 (PDF)
CapacityPlus Technical Brief #8 (Interactive Version)
Many developing countries are making significant investments to increase the number of health workers available to provide care to growing populations. However, the available funding is far short of what is required. For these countries to train and produce a health workforce sufficient to meet the populations’ needs, new sources of funding for health worker education need to be found. To address this problem, CapacityPlus partnered with the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank, and the Global Health Workforce Alliance in an exploration of innovative financing of health worker education. This technical brief presents a summary of the forms of financing proposed or documented through this process.
Keeping Up to Date: Continuing Professional Development for Health Workers in Developing Countries
CapacityPlus Technical Brief #6 (PDF)
CapacityPlus Technical Brief #6 (Interactive Version)
In order for health workers to provide quality care and meet their communities’ changing health care needs, they must become lifelong learners dedicated to updating their professional knowledge, skills, values, and practice. This technical brief summarizes the literature concerning current best practices and innovative ideas in continuing professional development (CPD). It is targeted toward people who run or advise CPD programs.
Scaling Up Health Workforce Education and Training: Guide for Applying the Bottlenecks and Best Buys Approach
CapacityPlus’s Bottlenecks and Best Buys Approach is designed to help educational institutions identify obstacles to increasing the production of competent and qualified health workers that can be overcome through limited yet strategic investments. This guide identifies the stakeholders who should be involved, the steps in conducting a bottlenecks assessment, and a method for using the results to identify and build consensus on the most effective and affordable actions (best buys) for overcoming bottlenecks. It also provides tools and examples for strategic steps in the approach, such as engaging stakeholders, conducting a situation analysis, defining the school’s scale-up goal, leading group interviews, analyzing the results, and presenting the final bottlenecks and best buys report to external stakeholders and potential investors. Access the guide and annexes, along with related resources.
Scaling Up Health Worker Production: The Bottlenecks and Best Buys Approach
CapacityPlus Technical Brief #9 (PDF)
CapacityPlus Technical Brief #9 (Interactive Version)
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.
Strengthening School Management: A Guide for Optimizing the Use of Health Workforce Education Resources
A Guide for Optimizing the Use of Health Workforce Education Resources
Education and training institutions around the globe are struggling to meet the increasing demand for more high-quality health workers. A more business-like approach to operating and managing these institutions would allow schools to produce greater numbers of competent and qualified graduates within budget. This guide includes self-assessment against predefined management standards or good practices, followed by prioritization, goal-setting, planning, implementation, and monitoring of progress. The guide.also provides useful tools to support each step. Learn more about the guide and access tools.
Strengthening the Health Worker Pipeline through Gender-Transformative Strategies
CapacityPlus Technical Brief #7 (PDF)
CapacityPlus Technical Brief #7 (Interactive Version)
CapacityPlus conducted a systematic review of 300 articles, reports, program documents, and websites on gender discrimination in higher education, including health worker preservice education. A panel of experts in gender and in human resources for health then reviewed summaries of 51 interventions identified from the literature search, according to selected characteristics of gender-transformative interventions. This technical brief provides an overview of how gender discrimination affects health professional students and faculty as well as intervention options that the expert panel identified as having potential to counter gender discrimination. In addition, it offers recommendations for preservice education institutions and other stakeholders to address these challenges. Also see the related report.
Transforming Health Professional Preservice Education to Meet National Needs
CapacityPlus supported more than 50 health professional schools in 12 African countries to strengthen health workforce education and school management, contributing to over 9,000 new health workers and building the capacity of these schools to continue scaling up production of graduates and improving the efficiency and quality of their programs.
For additional resources and publications visit the Education and Training section of the CapacityPlus Knowledge Library.