Study on human resources for health ( 2009)
Human resources play a central and critical role in improving access and quality health care for the population. Mechanisms for optimizing the strengths and skills of health professionals will be essential to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
Study Duration: 2009
The objective was to conduct situation analysis of the requirements of the medical officers and specialists, study the processes of recruitment and deployment and their effectiveness in the State including underserviced areas, study the educational strategies, compensation package and incentives offered, gaps between the services expected to be provided as per IPHS at facility levels, services currently provided and the workforce management policies in place.
The findings of the report are based on the data collected from 210 health facilities (all health facilities starting from primary health centres to district hospital) of the three sample districts, interview of 120 doctors, interview of 3 district in-charges and interview of the state authority. The three sample districts are Bagalkot district which is a poor performing district, Chittradurga district a medium performing district and Chikkamagalur district which is a high performing district.
The study found that private colleges are the most important source of graduation among the medical graduates in Karnataka. Around 57% of the MBBS doctors and 73% of BAMS were graduates from private college. But when it comes to specialists like Post Graduate Diploma, MD/MS/DNB major portion i.e. 60% graduated from government colleges. The basis of admission into the health services was mainly on merit with; around 83% among graduates and 80% in post graduates.Interview was the most common method of recruitment in all the three districts. Around 81% of the GDMO’s and 73% of specialists were placed in primary health centres in their first posting.50% of the GDMOs and 40% of the specialists interviewed were not aware of the existence of the transfer policy in the state. The doctors in all the three districts felt that a recommendation by self was the most common basis of transfer. 34% did not have any knowledge of the existence of a promotion policy in the state and most of the doctors interviewed feel that the promotion was only based on number of years in the service.60% of all the doctors feel that there was no written form of their work responsibility as per their knowledge and about three fourth of the doctors felt they were overburdened.97% of the GDMOs and 83% of the specialists interviewed receive monthly take home pay equal to or less than Rs. 25000. Most of the doctors i.e. 89% were not satisfied with the current pay.Most of the doctors feel they have adequate physical space and support from community. More than half of them felt they have adequate instruments, equipments and logistical support. Above 60% of all doctors said they do not have adequate support staff.
Almost half of the doctors felt they were not confident of doing administration work at the time of joining and many doctors even were not confident of supervising.
About 56% of all doctors have undertaken any type of Continuous Medical Education and 84% have undertaken any type of training in last two years and above 90% of doctors who have not undertaken CME are interested in participating a CME and 79% of those who have not undertaken any training are interested to participate in a training program
The Study Team

