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This systematic review and meta-analysis identified early evidence quantifying the disruption to the education of health workers by the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuing policy responses and their outcomes.
Methods
Following a pre-registered protocol and PRISMA/AMSTAR-2 guidelines, we systematically screened MEDLINE, EMBASE, Web of Science, CENTRAL, clinicaltrials.gov and Google Scholar from January 2020 to July 2022. We pooled proportion estimates via random-effects meta-analyses and explored subgroup differences by gender, occupational group, training stage, WHO regions/continents, and study end-year. We assessed risk of bias (Newcastle–Ottawa scale for observational studies, RοB2 for randomized controlled trials [RCT]) and rated evidence certainty using GRADE.
Results
Of the 171 489 publications screened, 2 249 were eligible, incorporating 2 212 observational studies and 37 RCTs, representing feedback from 1 109 818 learners and 22 204 faculty. The sample mostly consisted of undergraduates, medical doctors, and studies from institutions in Asia. Perceived training disruption was estimated at 71.1% (95% confidence interval 67.9–74.2) and learner redeployment at 29.2% (25.3–33.2). About one in three learners screened positive for anxiety (32.3%, 28.5–36.2), depression (32.0%, 27.9–36.2), burnout (38.8%, 33.4–44.3) or insomnia (30.9%, 20.8–41.9). Policy responses included shifting to online learning, innovations in assessment, COVID-19-specific courses, volunteerism, and measures for learner safety. For outcomes of policy responses, most of the literature related to perceptions and preferences. More than two-thirds of learners (75.9%, 74.2–77.7) were satisfied with online learning (postgraduates more than undergraduates), while faculty satisfaction rate was slightly lower (71.8%, 66.7–76.7). Learners preferred an in-person component: blended learning 56.0% (51.2–60.7), face-to-face 48.8% (45.4–52.1), and online-only 32.0% (29.3–34.8). They supported continuation of the virtual format as part of a blended system (68.1%, 64.6–71.5). Subgroup differences provided valuable insights despite not resolving the considerable heterogeneity. All outcomes were assessed as very-low-certainty evidence.
Conclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely disrupted health worker education, inflicting a substantial mental health burden on learners. Its impacts on career choices, volunteerism, pedagogical approaches and mental health of learners have implications for educational design, measures to protect and support learners, faculty and health workers, and workforce planning. Online learning may achieve learner satisfaction as part of a short-term solution or integrated into a blended model in the post-pandemic future.
Shortages usually call for the education, training, qualifying, and hiring as soon as possible of many more workers. But we have to be careful. The shortages are in specific occupations. “Better” needs as much attention as “more.”
This report analyzes the challenges in Canada’s health-sector workforce, focusing on imbalances between supply and demand, particularly for those most concerned with the provision of direct, hands-on support and care: physicians, nurses, and personal support workers (PSWs). It then makes recommendations on how to govern and strengthen the country’s cherished health system.
A global distribution of the health workforce in 2019 shows a substantial shortage of five health occupations (dentists, medical doctors, midwives, nurses, and pharmacists) identified in all regions of the world.
Identification of the service competences of family physicians is central to ensuring high-quality primary care and improving patient outcomes. However, little is known about how to assess the family physicians’ service competences in primary care settings. It is necessary to develop and validate a general model of core competences of the family physician under the stage of construction of family doctor system and implementation of ‘Internet Plus Healthcare’ service model in China.
Health systems in sub-Saharan Africa face multifaceted capacity challenges to fulfil their mandates of service provision and governance of their resources. Four academic institutions in Africa implemented a World Health Organisation-funded collaborative project encompassing training, curriculum development, and partnership to strengthen national leadership and training capacity for health workforce development. This paper looks into the training component of the project, a blended Masters programme in public health that sought to improve the capacity of personnel involved in teaching or management/development of human resources for health. The paper aims to explore factors influencing contribution of training to organisational capacity development.
Vinod Khosla, a legendary Silicon Valley investor, argues that robots will replace doctors by 2035. And there is some evidence that he may be right.
As the United States faces an increasingly aging population and its current nursing workforce ages into retirement, the demand for nurses is expected to be acutely felt in some regions of the country, particularly in rural communities where many patients already must travel long distances for care. According to the American Nurses Association, approximately 690,000 nurses are expected to stop working by 2024. Further compounding the problem, nursing programs are struggling to meet rising demands due to constraints on class size and the number of training spots available. At the same time, there is also a higher demand for a more culturally diverse and multilingual nursing workforce as demographics shift across the U.S.
The frontline workers who make up College for America students are represented in a wide swath of industries performing an even wider array of duties. They may be assembly line workers in a factory, orderlies in a health-care facility, long-haul truck drivers, and day laborers on a construction site. They may also be retail store clerks, call center employees, and bank tellers.
Nearly 40 percent of these frontline workers serve in three industries:
health care and social assistance (i.e., home health workers);
retail (cashiers); and
food services and accommodations (cooks and wait staff).
The Global RRT Training Package is a structured comprehensive collection of training resources and tools enabling relevant training institutions to organize, run and evaluate a 6-day face-to-face training for Rapid Response Teams.
MOOCs are short, free courses run by major learning providers to share their knowledge of a particular academic topic or to help students develop a specific skill.
Via Peter Mellow
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The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated the long-standing skills shortages in the health workforce across countries. Equipping health workers with the right skills is essential to respond to future health crises, to prepare for increasing use of digital technologies, and to plan for demographic change. This joint report by the OECD and ILO aims to enable more resilient health workforces by helping countries to assess future demand in terms of both numbers of health workers and skills needs, and to prepare appropriate policy responses. The report provides a comparative overview of practices in 16 countries to anticipate future skill needs in the health workforce, and of how such information is used by policy makers and social partners to foster a better alignment with labour market needs. Analysis is based on interviews with institutions that are responsible for anticipating skill needs in the health workforce, a virtual peer-learning workshop and desk research.
6 million female health workers are unpaid or underpaid! The exploitation of women’s labour has negative effects on health systems.
Interest in nursing is running high, but a massive shortage is making it hard for universities to find the in-class and in-hospital instructors to train them.
The World Health Organization is urging countries to create millions of new nursing jobs in low- and middle-income countries by 2030 to offset a projected shortage, as health care workers around the world respond to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
This report describes recent trends in the international migration of doctors and nurses in OECD countries. Over the past decade, the number of doctors and nurses has increased in many OECD countries, and foreign-born and foreign-trained doctors and nurses have contributed to a significant extent. New in-depth analysis of the internationalisation of medical education shows that in some countries (e.g. Israel, Norway, Sweden and the United States) a large and growing number of foreign-trained doctors are people born in these countries who obtained their first medical degree abroad before coming back. The report includes four case studies on the internationalisation of medical education in Europe (France, Ireland, Poland and Romania) as well as a case study on the integration of foreign-trained doctors in Canada.
Con el propósito de contribuir al avance de la enfermería, en este documento se presenta un análisis de la situación que guardan los programas de doctorado en los países de la Región,acompañado de un plan de acción cuyo objetivo es impulsar la formación de licenciados en enfermería con doctorado mediante la creación, desarrollo y consolidación de los programas de posgrado (nivel doctorado) durante el periodo 2018-2022
The University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda has just graduated its first class, aiming to shift the weight of global health education toward the developing world, and train a new generation of local health experts.
In this report, an expert panel review and discuss the current approaches to disaster education and training and propose a three-step operational learning framework that could be used for EMTs globally. The proposed framework includes the following steps: 1) ensure professional competence and license to practice, 2) support adaptation of technical and non-technical professional capacities into the low-resource and emergency context and 3) prepare for an effective team performance in the field. A combination of training methodologies is also recommended, including individual theory based education, immersive simulations and team training. Agreed curriculum and open access training materials for EMTs need to be further developed, ideally through collaborative efforts between WHO, operational EMT organizations, universities, professional bodies and training agencies. Keywords: disasters; education; emergencies; global health; learning
Almost 8,500 Liberian health workers have been trained in delivering safe, quality care as part of a Ministry of Health program aimed at rebuilding trust in a health system that was devastated by the Ebola outbreak.
Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges are the primary provider of vocational education in Australia. Most TAFE students are young adults, a period when health risk behaviours become established. Furthermore, high rates of smoking, risky alcohol consumption, inadequate fruit and vegetable intake and insufficient physical activity have been reported in TAFE students. There have been no intervention studies targeting multiple health risk behaviours simultaneously in this population. The proposed trial will examine the effectiveness of providing TAFE students with electronic feedback regarding health risk behaviours and referral to a suite of existing online and telephone services addressing smoking, risky alcohol consumption, fruit and vegetable intake, and physical activity levels.
TechChange provides scalable and interactive technology training for social change. We deliver online certificate courses to individuals, build customized courses and learning experiences for organizations, and strengthen technology-enabled communities of practice.
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