Donors and partners
The AHP model
PUBLIC SECTOR HEALTH WORKER STAFFING FOR SOUTHERN AFRICA
Our aim is to fill present staffing gaps in the healthcare system, while working toward a more sustainably staffed future – ultimately helping people to view the public sector in a new light – as truly viable and exciting career options. We can place over 20 foreign-qualified doctors at the cost of training just a single doctor. This acts as an excellent immediate stop-gap, with beneficial repercussions for retention and training of local health workers currently in the system. We are also using our monitoring and evaluation capabilities to identify the factors that are driving the brain drain, in order to inform effective strategysetting and advocacy for improved future staff retention.
We work with a network of partners, including governments, the private sector and civil society in order to make this happen, using a model that we like to call “social profit”. The bulk of our services are donor funded and delivered free of charge:
- We help local health facilities with the recruitment functions for which they lack the resources at no cost.
- We help candidates to find positions and to manage the bureaucracy around these placements within the public health sector at no cost.
- We can act as an effective manager of investments in human resources in health projects in the public health system.
AHP MODEL
AHP has successfully developed a recruitment and retention model for healthcare facilities based on years of expertise in rural and public health, recruitment, business management and operations. This cycle is the way in which AHP strives to aid healthcare facilities to become self-sustaining – all of which directly translates into improved health care delivery and access to health care in rural areas.
Management
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Foreign-doctor contingent
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Local health care workers
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Community Service and junior doctors
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Self-sustainability
- Ensure effective management (CEO, HR and Medical Manager) is in place at a particular facility. Without effective bureaucratic and human resource management, recruitment and retention for any facility requires a disproportionate amount of resources and will, ultimately, prove to be a failure. When AHP is able to work with a knowledgeable and competent hospital manager the results are impressive.
- Recruit a contingent of foreign qualified skills for the facility. Foreign skills from developed nations are willing to work in under-resourced rural settings on one to three year contracts. Such teams can form the core of longer-term sustainable clinical teams.
- Recruit local health workers for the facility. In rural areas, professional and personal isolation, as well as burn-out, are major factors inhibiting the development of clinical teams. With a contingent of foreign-qualified health workers with whom to work, local health workers can be attracted and retained.
- Attract junior doctors and trainees for the facility. With a team to support, supervise and manage, junior doctors and registrars can be effectively recruited, trained and retained.
- Bring facility to self-sustainability. Once a facility has a large enough team, management can focus on using its improved capacity and more attractive work offering to maintain its clinical team. This can be done through alumni networks of foreign and local health workers, advertising vacancies on partner websites and skill up in best practice recruitment methodology.
