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James Avoka Asamani

James Avoka Asamani

Nursing Officer/Human Resource Planner Human Resources Division Ghana Health Service, Accra

Title: ESTABLISHING EVIDENCED-BASED NATIONAL NURSING WORKFORCE GAPS: TECHNICAL INSIGHTS FROM GHANA

Biography

Biography: James Avoka Asamani

Abstract

Globally, most countries are said to be experiencing some shortage of nurses and midwives whilst others are classified as experiencing critical shortages. Consequently, stakeholders are making frantic and concerted to address this challenge. The missed health-related targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been partly blamed on insufficient or poorly distributed skilled health workforce. As a result, pursing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) without adequately addressing the human resource challenge would seem a recipe for missed targets by 2030. One of the critical steps to addressing human resource inadequacies and maldistribution is to determine the actual number and caliber of health workers required by a country, as well as the human resource availability gaps (HRAG). Unfortunately, in many situations there seem to be no empirical data on these for strategic decision making. It is against this background that the Ministry of Health in Ghana adopted the Workload Indicators of Staffing Needs (WISN) tool to develop an evidenced-based staffing standard for the health sector in 2014 to serve as a planning staff distribution tool. Based on this evidenced-based staffing standard, we undertook a Human Resource Gap analysis to inform our recruitment and redistribution strategies toward the achievement of universal health coverage by 2020. Contrary to some assertions that Ghana had trained and retained sufficient number of nurses, our results show significant nurse staffing deficits, mal-distribution and inappropriate skill mix. Based on these findings, several initiatives are being put in place to address the challenges and put Ghana on track towards the achievements of its health goals. Even though our results may be specific to the Ghanaian context, the technical tools and methods used, and the art of their application would benefit other countries seeking to establish staffing standards and/or conduct human resource gaps analysis for their health sector.