This course provides knowledge and skills that health care managers, policy makers and planners need for human resource planning and management. It discusses policies, strategies and practices at a national and workplace level to address health workforce issues.

How can policy makers and managers improve the performance of the health workforce? How does one plan human resources? How can organisational development contribute to the performance of health workers?

The quality of health service delivery depends largely on the availability and performance of qualified personnel, aided by sufficient facilities, equipment and drugs. Policy makers and managers can influence the performance of health workers by using carefully formulated and implemented human resources for health policies and strategies developed in consultation with stakeholders. In order to enhance workforce performance, policy makers and managers also need to be able to analyse organisational culture and behaviour and to identify appropriate leadership skills.

This course addresses the knowledge and skills that policy makers and managers need for human resource planning and management. It provides an overview of the situation of Human Resources for Health (HRH) from a global perspective and subsequently discusses policies, strategies and practices at a national level and at the workplace to address health workforce issues. Topics include rational planning, training, governance and gender, performance retention and motivation and, leadership and organisational change.

Objectives

At the end of the course the participants should be able to:

• Analyse various issues (such as governance, political economy gender inequalities, fiscal space) related to human resources in the health sector using a health labour market analysis
• Discuss different strategies to assure sufficient and qualified staff are equitably distributed
• Analyse organisational behaviour and discuss strategic options and leadership styles for change in a culturally sensitive manner
• Critically assess training programmes for health workers and provide appropriate recommendations for improvement
• Critically appraise staff performance, identify performance problems, and recommend appropriate solutions

For more information on this course go to: https://www.kit.nl/institute/programme/human-resources-health/

This course is tropEd accredited and can be followed as a stand-alone course or as specialisation course of the Master in Public Health and Health Equity programme.