Human Resources Development

Swiss TPH supports a wide variety of activities in the context of the Health Workforce 2030 agenda. These include: strengthening district health management; facilitating strategic human resources planning, and quantifying health worker migration and brain-drain. We conduct training needs assessments; develop locally adapted training courses, strengthen clinical skills development, estimate health workforce requirements, and shape medical education reforms.

Guiding principles

When it comes to health workforce issues, Swiss TPH operates at the complex intersection between Ministries of Health, Civil Service, Labour, Decentralisation, Finance and Higher Education, as well as with the faith-based and private sector. The unit has extensive knowledge on the topics of health worker motivation, performance, incentives, retention and job satisfaction. We always apply a gender-sensitive lens, and pay attention to health worker rights on one hand and professional and ethical codes of conduct on the other.

Promoting Clinical Skills in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Graduate medical education for doctors and nurses is increasingly focused on achieving competency in clinical skills and diagnostic reasoning, emphasising approaches that enhance patient safety and the quality of care. To learn and improve technical, psychomotor and interpersonal skills, repeated practice and simulation is needed. In a variety of contexts including Tajikistan, Moldova, Romania and the Ukraine support has/continues to be provided to promote the integration of clinical skills in undergraduate and speciality training of doctors, nurses and auxiliary staff.

Continuous Medical Education

Swiss TPH supports the design and implementation of sustainable continuing medical education and learning systems for various cadre of health workers. For example, in Tajikistan and Albania in the frame of the Medical Education Reform Project the concept of “Peer Review Groups” have been established and validated. Family doctors and family nurses meet on a monthly basis to discuss a problem that has arisen in the everyday practice. One member facilitates the sessions according to a given format and another prepares an input on the topic. A guided discussion ensues. At the end the session is evaluated according to whether it was evidence-based and participatory.

Management Training

A further, important aspect of our work consists of enhancing the management skills of managers of PHC services at district level. We have designed health management courses in collaboration with local partner institutions including the Department of Public Health at the University of Tirana, Albania, and the Post-Graduate Medical Institute in Tajikistan. Typically these are courses of up to two years comprising some 10-15 week long modules that link theory and practice, and combine distance and face-to-face learning.

Simulation Centre in Ukraine established within the framework of the Ukrainian-Swiss Mother and Child Health Programme

Reforming Medical Education Project in Tajikistan

Swiss TPH has made substantial contributions to consolidate the concept of family medicine in Tajikistan on behalf of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation for over a decade. This includes strengthening undergraduate education of medical and nursing students, especially through the promotion of clinical skills and improved learning methodologies. The project supports the preparation of placements for year 6 medical students and the clinical staff who mentor them. Clinical skills laboratories have been established at the Tajik State Medical University and two nursing colleges in Dushanbe and Kulob. Improvements in the learning environment are being assessed overtime using the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM) methodology.

Link to Project

Supporting Decentralized Management to Improve Health Workforce Performance

PERFORM2scale 2017-2022 builds on the first PERFORM project 2011-2015 and is funded by the European Union. It introduced an Action Research approach to equip health managers in selected districts in Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda with the skills and tools to analyse their health workforce situation and better understand the systemic factors at play. This allowed them to develop, implement and monitor a locally adapted set of response strategies to improve the performance of the existing workforce and, by extension, to strengthen service delivery.

Modernizing Moldova's Perinatology and Paediatric Services

In Moldova, Swiss TPH managed and implemented activities for two simulation centres, one for health professionals at the Institute of Mother and Child (IMSP Institutul Mamei şi Copilului), within the framework of the “Modernizing Moldovan Perinatology System” project, and the other at the Nicolae Testemiţanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy, within the framework of the Regionalization of the Paediatric Emergency and Intensive Care Medical Services System (REPEMOL) project. The projects were funded by the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation between 2006-2014.

Link to Project

Health Systems Support

Health Technology and Telemedicine

Education and Training