About AHP

Since 2005, AHP has worked extensively with Human Resource Management issues within the South African public healthcare system. We have subsequently become highly conversant with the particular challenges that have to be addressed in order to make the system work. These include:

• Translating policy into practice in a way that is appropriate and practical - working within the constraints and making it work.
• Understanding the factors that drive public health service as a career choice and helping to make them happen (career path, remuneration, mentoring and support, lifestyle).
• Understanding the factors that drive people away from a career in public health, as well as those factors that are simply frustrating (lack of resources, poor management, maladministration, bureacracy, and simple process bottlenecks) and doing what we can to address these - either directly or through advocacy.

This knowledge is potentially quite valuable to any government department or facilty manager that is tasked with improving the success rates in attracting and retaining relevant health professionals. While our present experience is largely South African, we do believe it can be adapted to other African country contexts.

To this end, AHP now offers a consulting service, in which we assist with strategy setting for improved overall human resource management.

Recruiting healthcare professionals to work in the public sector is the primary focus of what we do. What makes this a challenge is the diversity of requirements and legislation in different contexts and matching this up to the unique needs and situation of specific candidates, so as to find "the perfect fit" for every situation. To this end, we work with a number of specific recruitment scenarios:

Professional, permanent placements:
The most common option, for candidates seeking a long term, full-time placement at a particular facility (these may be local or foreign appointments);

Locum placements:
AHP also offers a fee-based locum placement option for facilities seeking locum candidates for short-term work;

Volunteer placements:
The final option is volunteer placements. We offer both foreign and local candidates the opportunity to work in underserved facilities on a volunteer basis and also assist in managing the necessary paperwork in this regard.

The scope of our involvement includes:

• Creating opportunities (through interaction with individual district managers);
• Marketing and advertising of posts
• Management and filtering of applications according to job specification and national legislation
• Management of all administration legislated through Health Professions Council policy
• Management of examination process where relevant
• Administration of final candidate placement and liaison with facility
• Post placement orientation

Arriving at a new job can be a pretty stressful affair at the best of times. But when that job is at a remote hospital in a rural African village, there is potentially a little more to be uncertain about. It is for this reason that AHP employs a dedicated orientation officer, whose purpose is to ensure that every newly placed person is able to settle and be productive. This includes local placements but particularly focuses on foreign recruits.

The service begins long before one actually arrives at the destination, as we equip you with all the information that you will need to make your arrival a pleasant one:

The scope of our involvement includes:

• For foreign candidates, this includes information on local tax laws, pension and banking requirements, transport arrangements, safety issues, and so on. We even give you access to basic tutorials on the local language.
• Then there are the issues that apply to all candidates, such as ensuring that you have the necessary details on available accommodation, local facilities and amenities, schools, etc.
• We also liaise with the local HR department in order to ensure that each arrival is expected, and that important arrangements (such as salaries) have been put in place.

Upon arrival, we make sure you are well equipped. Every candidate is issued with a satchel of essential field manuals, on topics ranging from dealing with HIV, to performing basic procedures that may not have been required in a city hospital --- all the way to language learning guides. Where available, we also give you a bit of a guide to what's on in the area (recreation, tourism, etc).

Last but not least, we make sure you've got a support network. In those facilities we've been working with for some time, there tends to be a good complement of doctors, making for excellent team spirit and quite a good social life. But there are also those facilities where we're just starting out, where you may be one of the first people placed. Understanding this, we are taking steps to create regional and national support networks for medical staff - from conferences and get-togethers, to a special facility to be added to this website, where you can search for and connect with people in other facilities - for advice, for support, or simply for a friendly face. In the meantime, feel free to go and check out our Facebook page!

What's the point in effecting positive change if you have no way to measure it?

AHP employs a dedicated person to monitor the success of all our initiatives, to track whether the people we have placed are happy --- and whether the facilities at which they are placed are happy. We gather information constantly: from the website, from direct ongoing interactions, and from regular surveys.

The results are used primarily to provide detailed intelligence to partners and funders, but they also serve another essential purpose: to allow us to continuously improve upon what we are doing by understanding the real issues being experienced in the field.

Having done this on an ongoing basis for the past five years, we have amassed a substantial bank of intelligence, and are subsequently branching out to the provision of relevant information services.

Include note that hospitals and candidates are expected to respond to surveys when sent.

We see a whole new future for public health in Africa: where qualified professionals from all over the globe (and particularly in our own countries) start to see the merits of this career choice, opting for lifestyle and job satisfaction over suburbia and same-old routine. Where overstretched and understaffed facilities transform into vibrant centres for real medicine, real care - and a touch of adventure.

But it's a vision that will demand commitment and involvement from everyone concerned - academia, government, professionals and their families - and hence the final part of our offering: advocacy.

We are working with academic organisations, government, civil society, the media and other advocacy groups to:

• change minds (see our doctor stories);
• work with important actions (such as the formation of a clinical associates programme); and
• influence policy (such as our present participation in the debate on ethical recruitment in Africa).

If you like to join the conversation, please feel free to get in touch. We'd love to hear from you.