Are we measuring our health workforce shortage right?
Hindustan TimesIf 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 around to handle the massive patient list, and security trying hard to keep people in check. 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 showing a shortage of these cadres in PHCs. The study used existing survey data from 93 facilities from five states over eight years to create WISN calculations for various HRH cadres at rural public primary and community health care centres. Public health care centres staff HRH as per the Indian Public Health Standards norms based on population density in a particular area. Unlike WISN, current IPHS guidelines define Centre-contingent norms for HRH sanctioning that do not account for workload pressure on HRH cadres and differences in healthcare demands leading to under-sanctioning across several states, particularly for nurses and specialist doctors.
History of this topic
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