New Resource Spotlight: Health Workforce Productivity: An Approach for Measurement, Analysis, and Improvement

A new course on the Global Health eLearning Center explores the productivity of health workers at the facility level.

Health Workforce Productivity: An Approach for Measurement, Analysis, and Improvement is authored by CapacityPlus’s Rachel Deussom and Wanda Jaskiewicz of IntraHealth International. Nandini Jayarajan of K4Health serves as course manager.

Making the most of the current health workforce

The global shortage of health workers is already 7.2 million. In 83 countries, the number of health workers relative to the population falls below the minimum amount needed to provide basic services. Training new health workers is vital, but in the meantime countries can also improve the productivity of their existing workforce.

Scaling up high-quality health services

Increasing health workers’ productivity will make service delivery more efficient and ensure that high-quality family planning, reproductive health, HIV and AIDS, maternal and child health and other key services are accessible to the population.

A practical overview

eLearning course screenshotThis free course explores some basic concepts of health workforce productivity and provides useful descriptions of:

  • A quantitative, formulaic approach for measuring productivity at the facility level
  • Possible underlying causes of low productivity and methods to measure them
  • Potential interventions to improve productivity and strengthen health services.

Who can benefit from this course?

Health worker in KenyaThe course is aimed at:

  • Health program and facility managers and supervisors
  • District, regional, and provincial health management teams
  • Human resources for health managers
  • Individuals providing technical assistance to those mentioned above
  • Individuals with a general interest in learning about health workforce productivity.

It takes approximately two hours to complete the course, after which each learner will receive a certificate.

Additional eLearning courses

A related course, Human Resources for Health (HRH) Basics, is available on the Global Health eLearning Center. In addition, the HRH Global Resource Center offers a free course on Designing Evidence-Based Incentives to Attract and Retain Health Workers Using the Rapid Retention Survey Toolkit.

To learn more, read the full course description. For help accessing the course, refer to the course instructions.

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Photo by Trevor Snapp, courtesy of IntraHealth International (a family planning consultation at the Mathare North Health Centre in Nairobi, Kenya)