Health Workers In Remote Areas Research Articles

Equate access to primary health care in rural Kalimantan: what essential health services should be available locally?

Indigenous and remote ethnic populations experience poorer health status than metropolitan populations due to unequal access to essential healthcare services (Primary healthcare). This study aims to assess which essential health services are best provided by health workers and describe the service needs problem from the patient's perspective. The Delphi method consists of informants represented by rural and remote health centers. Using open-ended questions, they represent the population for each health center service. Each question must identify a problem based on the core of essential health services. The results of the study show that the criteria that must be met include the importance of equality in health services; consideration of social determinants of health; flexibility, effective resource budgeting, adjusting the type of health services according to patient needs, and providing assistance as close to home as possible. The conclusions of this study can help policymakers and service planners to determine what types of service needs should be provided by health workers in remote areas, to allocate resources and provide services more equitably, and to inform patients about healthcare services that they expect to be able to access pretty within the community.
 Keywords: Health care system; community nursing; nursing care; delphi study; health population

Depression and Psychological Stress Among Health Workers in Remote Areas in Indonesia.

BackgroundThe Indonesian government launched the Nusantara Sehat program in 2015, under which teams of health workers were assigned to community health care centers in remote, border, and island areas for 2 years. The deployment to remote areas is likely to affect their psychological condition if they are not equipped with facilities and strong motivation. This study aimed to describe the psychological condition of health workers in remote areas in Indonesia, focusing on the proportion of the prevalence of depression and psychological stress.Materials and MethodsThis cross-sectional study was conducted between April and December of 2018. Participants were 140 health workers placed in 26 community healthcare centers in 13 provinces. Interviews were conducted by enumerators using a questionnaire that included questions from the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) and Self-Reporting Questionnaire-20 (SRQ-20).ResultsOf the participants, 7.1% experienced depression and 10.0% experienced psychological stress. Motivation was related to psychological stress in participants with an odds ratio of 0,218 (95% confidence interval = 0.065–0.729, p = 0.013). Health workers with high motivation tend not to experience psychological stress compared to individuals with lower motivation.ConclusionHealth workers with high motivation experience relatively low levels of psychological stress. To overcome stress, high motivation is needed to control psychological risk factors before and during placement.

How to attract health students to remote areas in Indonesia: a discrete choice experiment.

Remote areas of Indonesia lack sufficient health workers to meet the health-care needs of the population. There is an urgent need for evidence regarding interventions to attract health workers and specifically health students to serve in remote areas. The aim of this research was to analyze the job preferences of health students to develop effective policies to improve the recruitment and retention of health students in remote areas. A discrete choice experiment was conducted to investigate health students' preferences regarding job characteristics. This study was conducted in three different regions of Indonesia, with a total included 400 health students. Mixed logit models were used to explore the stated preferences for each attribute. Data were collected from 150 medical, 150 nursing and 100 midwifery students. Medical students gave the highest preference for receiving study assistance, while nursing students viewed salary as the most important. Midwifery students valued advanced quality facilities as an important attribute. This study confirmed the importance of combination interventions in attracting and retaining health workers in remote areas of Indonesia. Money is not the only factor affecting student preferences to take up a rural post; good management and better facilities were viewed as important by all health students. Addressing health student preferences, which are the candidate of future health workforce, would help the nation solve the recruitment and retention issues. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Addressing health workforce distribution concerns: a discrete choice experiment to develop rural retention strategies in Cameroon.

Nearly every nation in the world faces shortages of health workers in remote areas. Cameroon is no exception to this. The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) is currently considering several rural retention strategies to motivate qualified health personnel to practice in remote rural areas. To better calibrate these mechanisms and to develop evidence-based retention strategies that are attractive and motivating to health workers, a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) was conducted to examine what job attributes are most attractive and important to health workers when considering postings in remote areas. The study was carried out between July and August 2012 among 351 medical students, nursing students and health workers in Cameroon. Mixed logit models were used to analyze the data. Among medical and nursing students a rural retention bonus of 75% of base salary (aOR= 8.27, 95% CI: 5.28-12.96, P< 0.001) and improved health facility infrastructure (aOR= 3.54, 95% CI: 2.73-4.58) respectively were the attributes with the largest effect sizes. Among medical doctors and nurse aides, a rural retention bonus of 75% of base salary was the attribute with the largest effect size (medical doctors aOR= 5.60, 95% CI: 4.12-7.61, P< 0.001; nurse aides aOR= 4.29, 95% CI: 3.11-5.93, P< 0.001). On the other hand, improved health facility infrastructure (aOR= 3.56, 95% CI: 2.75-4.60, P< 0.001), was the attribute with the largest effect size among the state registered nurses surveyed. Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) estimates were generated for each health worker cadre for all the attributes. Preference impact measurements were also estimated to identify combination of incentives that health workers would find most attractive. Based on these findings, the study recommends the introduction of a system of substantial monetary bonuses for rural service along with ensuring adequate and functional equipment and uninterrupted supplies. By focusing on the analysis of locally relevant, actionable incentives, generated through the involvement of policy-makers at the design stage, this study provides an example of research directly linked to policy action to address a vitally important issue in global health.

Health worker recruitment and deployment in remote areas of Indonesia

Providing health care in remote and very remote areas has long been a major concern in Indonesia. In order to improve access to quality health care for residents in these areas, various policies on recruitment and deployment of health workers have been implemented, among them compulsory service, contracted staff and the Special Assignment of strategic health workers. Indonesia's difficult geography presents great challenges to health service delivery and most health workers prefer to serve in urban areas, resulting in an uneven distribution of health workers and shortages in remote areas. Great efforts have been made to mobilize health human resources more equitably, including placement schemes for strategic health workers and contracted staff, combined with an incentive scheme. While these have partially addressed the severe shortage of health workers in remote areas, current government policies were reviewed in order to clarify the current situation in Indonesia. The Contracted Staff and Special Assignment of Strategic Health Workers programs show have made a significant contribution to improving the availability of health workers in Indonesia's remote areas. As these two programs used financial incentives as the main intervention, other non-financial interventions should also be trialed. For example, incentives such as the promise of a civil servant appointment or the provision of continuing professional education, as well as the recruitment of rural-background health workers may increase the willingness of health staff to serve in the remote and very remote areas of Indonesia.

Reaching Remote Health Workers in Malawi: Baseline Assessment of a Pilot mHealth Intervention

mHealth has great potential to change the landscape of health service delivery in less developed countries—expanding the reach of health information to frontline health workers in remote areas. Formative, process, and summative evaluation each play an important role in mHealth interventions. K4Health conducted a Health Information Needs Assessment in Malawi from July to September 2009 (formative evaluation) that found widespread use of cell phones among health workers offering new opportunities for knowledge exchange, especially in areas where access to health information is limited. K4Health subsequently designed an 18-month demonstration project (January 2010 to June 2011) to improve the exchange and use of family planning/reproductive health and HIV/AIDS knowledge among health workers, which included the introduction of a short message service (SMS) network. K4Health conducted a pretest of the mHealth intervention from June to October 2010. A baseline assessment was carried out in November 2010 before expanding the SMS network and included use of qualitative and quantitative measures and comparison groups (summative evaluation). Routinely collected statistics also guide the program (process evaluation). This article describes the approach and main findings of the SMS baseline study and contributes to a growing body of evidence measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of mHealth programs using a strong evaluation design.

Participatory action research as a strategy for empowering aboriginal health workers.

A participatory action research project was undertaken with Aboriginal health workers on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands in South Australia. The study examined the factors that affect the empowerment of Aboriginal health workers within the context of an Aboriginal-controlled primary health care service. This project was different from previous research conducted with Aboriginal health workers in remote areas for two reasons. First, it enabled them to participate actively as co-researchers in the study, and second, it brought about action and change during the research process. The three main factors preventing Aboriginal health workers from attaining a key role within the health service are the standard of training they receive, their low literacy and numeracy levels, and their lack of participation in decision making within the health service. Each of these factors is interrelated and all affect the Aboriginal health workers' ability to have more control and responsibility within the health service.