Developing Guidelines for Scaling Up and Transforming Health Professional Education

Strengthening the ability of health professional schools to produce greater numbers of better qualified, more relevant graduates is critical for addressing the health workforce crisis. Many schools, however, are not able to produce the quantity and quality of graduates needed to deliver priority health services, where they are needed most, in order to achieve universal access to health care.

From March 20-22, CapacityPlus played a key role in a meeting to develop World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on “Transforming and Scaling-up Health Professional Education and Training.” The meeting was jointly organized by the WHO, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and CapacityPlus in collaboration with the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and USAID.

Over 40 country representatives and health education experts gathered in Washington, DC at the PAHO offices to discuss topics related to health worker education, including faculty and student recruitment and retention, financing, accreditation, curriculum, use of ICT, continuing professional development, and student admission criteria and procedures.

CapacityPlus’s Rebecca Bailey facilitated the discussion on faculty development. CapacityPlus’s Dr. Kate Tulenko facilitated the discussion on financing. Most health professional schools lack adequate numbers of qualified faculty who are needed to scale up education and training, and require innovative financing mechanisms to realize their scale-up plans.

Following the discussions, participants reached consensus on some key recommendations for scaling up education and training. The complete set of recommendations will be finalized later this year. The benefit of these guidelines, however, will lie in how they are shared and used by national planners and health professional schools. CapacityPlus will integrate the finalized guidelines into its work, and will help with dissemination by posting and highlighting them on its HRH Global Resource Center.

Related items: 

• 2011’s Must-Read Health Workforce Publication

• Nursing and Midwifery Education in Ethiopia: Ensuring Professional Capacity and Relevance

• Nurses Needed: Partnering to Scale Up Health Worker Education in Malawi

Photo 1 courtesy of Rebecca Bailey. (Meeting presenters, with Rebecca at far right) Photo 2 by Rachel Deussom. (Dr. Kate Tulenko)