The performance of health workers in Ethiopia: Results from qualitative research
Magnus Lindelow and
Pieter Serneels
Social Science & Medicine, 2006, vol. 62, issue 9, 2225-2235
Abstract:
Insufficient attention has been paid to understanding what determines the performance of health workers. This paper reports on findings from focus group discussions with both health workers and users of health services in Ethiopia, a country with some of the poorest health outcomes in the world. We describe performance problems identified by both health users and health workers participating in the focus group discussions, including absenteeism and shirking, pilfering drugs and materials, informal health care provision and illicit charging, and corruption. In the second part of the paper we present four structural reasons why these problems arise: (i) the ongoing transition from health sector dominated by the public sector, towards a more mixed model; (ii) the failure of government policies to keep pace with the transition towards a mixed model of service delivery; (iii) weak accountability mechanisms and the erosion of professional norms in the health sector; and (iv) the impact of HIV/AIDS. The discussions underline the need to base policies on a micro-analysis of how health workers make constrained choices, both in their career and in their day to day professional activities.
Keywords: Health; worker; performance; Human; resources; for; health; Corruption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(05)00541-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
Working Paper: The Performance of Health Workers in Ethiopia Results from Qualitative Research (2005) 
Working Paper: The performance of health workers in Ethiopia - results from qualitative research (2005) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:62:y:2006:i:9:p:2225-2235
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01
Access Statistics for this article
Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian
More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().