Question:

It has been noted that the term of medical workforces has different concepts and components according to different countries. Some countries where consider medical workforce as the medical doctors only, while other countries consider medical workforce as doctors and other staff such as nurses or allied health.
Give a few definitions for the medical workforces. If possible consider any of the following countries: New Zealand, Finland, Kuwait, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Fiji, Ireland, Kenya, Nepal and Lebanon.

Answer:

Definitions and components of medical workforces

The concepts and components of the term ‘medical workforce’ tend to vary from country to country. In Uganda, the term ‘medical workforce’ is used to refer to both medical doctors and other staff such as nurses. This is evident in the way researchers make reference only to the medical workforce or simply ‘health workers’ when addressing the issue of reforms in the health sector (Record, 2010). in Uganda, members of the Allied Health Professional Council (AHPC), the Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners Council (UMDPC), and the Uganda Pharmacy Council (UPC) are collectively referred to as ‘health workforce’ (Spero, 2011).

In article aimed at investigating whether medical students had an intention of working in rural health facilities upon completion of training in Uganda, the term ‘health workforce’ was used to refer to all professionals working in the health occupation, namely: medical doctors, pharmacists, dentists, nurses, midwives, nursing assistants, clinical allied professionals, faith healers (traditional practitioners) (Wandira & Maniple, 2009).

In Ireland, there is a slight difference, with a distinction being made between the roles of a general practitioner (GP) and a nurse (Teljeur et al, 2010). Both of them however, it appears, may be referred to as medical workforce (Teljeur et al, 2010). Another difference between Ireland and Uganda is the tendency to focus too much on GPs at the expense of other health workers whenever there are debates on medical workforce planning.

Still in Ireland, reference to the notion of medical workforce is made more explicitly in the context of the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training (MET) Group (Buttimer, 2010). The recommendations made by the MET Group on how to improve Ireland’s health care point out to the important role played by the medical workforce (Buttimer, 2010). In these recommendations, top on the list of the medical workforce is GP. The other components of workforce in these recommendations include non-consultant hospital doctors, nurses, and dentists.

References

Buttimer, J. (2010) Preparing Ireland’s Doctors to meet the Health Needs of the 21st Century: Report of the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Group, Retrieved from http://www.hrb.ie/fileadmin/Staging/Documents/RSF/PEER/Policy_Docs/Relevant_reports/buttimer.pdf  on May 20, 2012.

Record, R. (2010) Health worker responses to health sector reforms, retrieved from http://www.eldis.org/id21ext/publications/health%20workforce.pdf  on May 20, 2012.

Spero, J. (2011) Tracking and monitoring the health workforce: a new human resources information system (HRIS) in Uganda, Human Resources for Health, 9(6), 213-301.

Teljeur, C., Thomas, S. O’Kelly, F. & O’Dowd, T. (2010) General practitioner workforce planning: Assessment of four policy directions, BMC Health Services Research, 10(148), 1-10.

Wandira, G. & Maniple, E. (2009) Do Ugandan Medical Students Intend To Work In Rural Health Facilities after Training? Health Policy and Development, 7(3), 203-214.