Report: Community Service for Health Professionals Summit


Written by the Department of Health, the Foundation for Professional Development and Africa Health Placements, the 28-page report is the product of a 2015 summit aimed at evaluating the implementation of government’s community service policy.
Specifically, the summit discussed community service experiences and objectives within the context of the National Human Resource for Health Strategy 2012-2017. The meeting also reviewed community service guidelines and provincial implementation of community service.
The summit marked the first time the community service policy has been systematically reviewed since its 1997 implementation.
The report begins by reviewing data on, for instance, the percentage of doctors participating in community service as well as rural and provincial distributions of community service health workers.
The publication concludes with a number of recommendations, including:
That an accreditation system for community service facilities be developed, including minimum standards for orientation, supervision and management support;
Amending the community service policy to improve the experience of rural community service officers to include incentives such as study leave, professional development opportunities and job security through multiyear employment contracts that extend beyond community service; and
That there must be clear, transparent and standardised guidelines on the allocation of community service posts. Requests for alternative placements should not compromise the policy objectives, particularly placement in rural, underserved areas, and a system to monitor abuse should be established.
Download the report: Community Service for Health Professionals Summit
Author
Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Report: Community Service for Health Professionals Summit
by healthe, Health-e News
June 2, 2016
MOST READ
Lack of ambulance forces woman to give birth near hospital gate
US aid Freeze: Call for urgent plan and increased budget for health
US funding freeze disrupts HIV, TB, and GBV support services
Kindness costs: The hidden sacrifices nurses make for patients with TB
EDITOR'S PICKS
Related

HIV remains a leading killer in Africa despite medical breakthroughs – how to eliminate it


Discovery study finds Pfizer vaccine lowers risk of hospitalisation

HIV remains a leading killer in Africa despite medical breakthroughs – how to eliminate it

