Are We Measuring Our Workforce

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October 30th , 2024

EMMANUEL ELIKPLIM KOMLA OWUSU

A year ago

ARE WE MEASURING OUR WORKFORCE

Health

A year ago

If one were to think of a public health facility in India, they would imagine long queues of patients lining up for scarce outpatient care, doctors and nurses buzzing aroundto handle the massive patient list, and security trying hard to keep people in check. To overcome staff shortages, most policies rely on population-level thresholds, such as the popular one doctor per 1000 people. However, such thresholds leave a lot out when we think of health care facilities as systems. Such thresholds don�t account for differences across health facility setups, working hours and workload pressures on health workers, among other things. There is a need to monitor workforce shortages and workload pressure on health workers at a more granular level to improve the overall productivity. The Workload Indicators of Staffing Need (WISN) is a human resources for health (HRH) management method supported by the World Health Organization (WHO) to quantify shortages and workload using data on time taken for various clinical and supporting (administrative and other) tasks and resources available. WISN considers annual available working time, actual work, and standard time required for each activity.

The Workload Indicators of Staffing Need (WISN) is a human resources for health (HRH) management method supported by the World Health Organization (WHO) to quantify shortages and workload using data on time taken for various clinical and supporting (administrative and other) tasks and resources available.(ANI Photo) The Workload Indicators of Staffing Need (WISN) is a human resources for health (HRH) management method supported by the World Health Organization (WHO) to quantify shortages and workload using data on time taken for various clinical and supporting (administrative and other) tasks and resources available.(ANI Photo) The first WISN implementation was published by WHO in 1998 and it was improved upon in 2010 by developing a user-friendly software that is now used by representatives from over 140 countries. In practical terms, WISN uses a data-driven approach to inform how many more (or less) health workers are needed for running an optimised healthcare system where no staff are overworked or underutilised. Countries such as South Africa, Namibia, Bangladesh and others have successfully used WISN to revise their staffing norms for adequate supply and equitable distribution of personnel among available facilities and even development of new HRH cadres. Previously, small scale WISN-based assessments have been conducted in India, focused mainly on nurses working in different medical specialties and medical officers working at primary health care centres (PHCs) showing a shortage of these cadres in PHCs. Some studies have pointed to tertiary care hospitals having a surplus of staff. However, the smaller samples and narrow focus of past studies make it difficult to use the date for national HRH planning.

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