A qualitative analysis of health professionals’ job descriptions for surgical service delivery in Uganda
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Date
2014
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Human resources for health
Abstract
The ever increasing demand for surgical services in sub-Saharan Africa is creating a need to increase
the number of health workers able to provide surgical care. This calls for the optimisation of all available human
resources to provide universal access to essential and emergency surgical services. One way of optimising already
scarce human resources for health is by clarifying job descriptions to guide the scope of practice, measuring
rewards/benefits for the health workers providing surgical care, and informing education and training for health
professionals. This study set out to determine the scope of the mandate to perform surgical procedures in current
job descriptions of surgical care health professionals in Uganda.
Methods: A document review was conducted of job descriptions for the health professionals responsible for
surgical service delivery in the Ugandan Health care system. The job descriptions were extracted and subjected to
a qualitative content data analysis approach using a text based RQDA package of the open source R statistical
computing software.
Results: It was observed that there was no explicit mention of assignment of delivery of surgical services to a
particular cadre. Instead the bulk of direct patient related care, including surgical attention, was assigned to the
lower cadres, in particular the medical officer. Senior cadres were assigned to perform predominantly advisory and
managerial roles in the health care system. In addition, a no cost opportunity to task shift surgical service delivery
to the senior clinical officers was identified.
Description
Keywords
health professionals, job, service delivery, Uganda
Citation
Buwembo, W., Munabi, I. G., Galukande, M., Kituuka, O., & Luboga, S. A. (2014). A qualitative analysis of health professionals’ job descriptions for surgical service delivery in Uganda. Human resources for health, 12(1), 1-9.