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.

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EMMANUEL ELIKPLIM KOMLA OWUSU

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