Dynamics of Health Manpower Planning

Abstract

What is health manpower planning? Very simply, it is the process of trying to make sure that we shall have enough health workers to meet, but not exceed, the future, effective economic demandt for their services. Why is an understanding of this process important? The Minister of Health of Pakistan must know: 'Will we have enough doctors and nurses in I980 to care for our exploding population?' Japanese health planners must be able to estimate the impact of an ageing population on doctor demand. Medical school deans in Turkey must understand the dynamics of manpower supply and demand to avoid overor underproduction of doctors. The Director General of Health Services of India must have a knowledgeable answer when the politicians ask him: 'How soon can you provide one doctor for every 2,000 people, and how much will it cost?' In every nation directors of health programmes ranging from prenatal care to geriatrics are faced with the questions: What will be the future demand for our programmes? What human resources do we need to meet these demands? Virtually everyone in a position of responsibility in the health field needs a clear concept of the problems and dynamics of health planning. Planning is of particular importance in developing nations where skilled manpower resources are often in desperately short supply-there is less margin for error there! For example, the failure to plan well has resulted in Philippine medical schools training more doctors than the country can support at present wage scales. The resultant doctor migration to the United States means, in effect, that the scarce resources of the Philippines are being expended to provide doctors for another country. India, having trained only half as many nurses as doctors, is unable to free highly-trained, relatively highly paid, doctors from tasks done better and more cheaply by nurses. Not only is health manpower planning important, it is urgent, due to the long lag time in training health professionals. Hospitals can be built in months, but it takes a decade to train a doctor. The importance of health manpower planning should be self-evident-but, throughout the world, decaying water systems, unmanned health centres and empty hospitals stand as monuments to dismally inadequate manpower planning.