Consensus on Workforce Standards for Hospitals in Egypt
Apr 29 2009
One of the key challenges facing the Ministry of Health (MOH) in its reform efforts is ensuring that Egypt has the right human capacities and workforce in place to roll out and sustain reforms.
To address this issue, the MOH and Health Systems 20/20 brought together providers from MOH hospitals, university professors, and MOH representatives for a four-day “Expert Opinion Workshop for Setting Hospital Workforce Standards” in March 2009 to reach consensus on a series of workforce standards for hospitals.
The workshop was led and facilitated by Health Systems 20/20, the Ministry of Health Undersecretary of the Human Resource Central Administration Dr. Mohaga Mostafa, and a group of MOH physicians selected to be part of the MOH Human Resources Task Force. Dr. Mohga recommended expanding the scope of the workforce planning activities to cover additional governorates and all MOH facilities (PHCs and hospitals in each governorate). Experts shared experiences and opinions and reached consensus on a series of standards pertaining to ten hospital departments: internal medicine, pediatrics and neonatology, intensive care, dentistry, general surgery, obstetrics/gynecology, burns, renal dialysis, and emergency.
Participants hailed the workshop as a highly successful and unprecedented effort in Egypt to bring together practitioners and policymakers to share their expertise and ideas regarding hospital staffing standards. The consensus reached at the workshop on workforce standards will be used to estimate staffing needs in MOH hospitals and to inform policy on workforce planning in the future.
