Defence Services Medical Academy

Department of Preventive and Social Medicine

Assignment No : 10

Assignment Title : Human Resource Management for Health

Course : Online Course

Subject : Public Health Administration

Lecturer : Lt. Col Kyaw Myo Tun

Student No : MPH -7

Student Name : Capt. Myat Min Thein

Due date : __25_/__9__/ 2019

Date submitted : _24__/_9___/ 2019

Word count : 1476 words

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 Human Resource Management for Health System

Introduction
Human resource is the most essential part of the resource to achieve success and good
outcome for all the system including health. Health care system also depend on human
resources. Moreover manpower, supply, need and demand are the most essential source to
achieve success in health care system. If we cannot manage the resources effectively,
imbalance of human resource will have a negative impact on the quality of health services
and can cause failure in health care system. In Myanmar health services are provided by
public, private and non government organization (NGO) sectors and ethnic health
organizations (EHO)(Hassani et al., 2013). Health services in Myanmar are decentralized and
give proper healthcare to patients at hospitals around the city, village ,township, district, state,
regional and national levels. In Myanmar , human resource for Health Strategy 2018-2021
provides direction for improving and strengthening the healthcare workforce as a Pillar of the
National Health Plan 2017-2021 to achieve the phase of the universal health coverage benefit
package. As for the military commander of a medical battalion, based on the available
information and analysis of the health and evaluate the current problems in human resource
situation is essential to highlight the areas that need to take actions for strengthening the
health. (Hassani et al., 2013)The most important part for taking action is to strengthening the
health workforce, planning, quality governance and financing.(Sumah & Baatiema, 2019)
Based on available information , we need to promote and understand the underlying condition
and lays down the long term mission, vision and objective for Human Resource for health.

Human Resource Challenges in Military Medical Battalion and Military

Hospital
Progressively, all system need to work appropriately through filtering the right job at the right
time, at the right person is needed to promote through filtering the right labor according to the
require competencies and job in each vacancies. Selecting and recruiting the elites, work
force for lifelong development and maintenance. Then human resource management can
proceed the right and required services that need to be delivered to the right population.
Otherwise health system faces lots of challenges and unbalance due to problems and
deficiency in the function or mutual relations made between its sub-system. Human resource
management is a systematic and systemic process involving all subsystems of the whole

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health care system. HRM is an inseparable subsystem of the health system without which the
whole system wouldn’t be able to deliver the right services.(Ishijima et al., 2015) HRM is not
only a multi sectorial based function, but also is a processed based one. That is because of the
multi-functional nature and workforce of the system that make it improvement for all
subsystems. In Medical Battalion there is an interdependent relation between the function of
health sector and the human resource management. Thus we can conclude that all problems
the health system is facing with stem from the malfunction within the human resource
management. In medical battalion in Myanmar , our aim and objective for the health care
system is that we need to give proper medical services to all the infantries and respondent
families in each of the respective regiment. The main issues and challenges in human
resource management in military is that health is one of the four pillars of the national health
plan to strengthen the health systems for effective delivery of the health coverage to all the
military population. Evidence discussed in this situation may be improved by highlight issues
and challenges according to three pillars. They are, Planning, Quality, Government and
Financing.

Planning

For planning we need to research the information and planning. We need to establish central
human resource information systems to enable effective policy formulation and operational
decision making, including the deployment and appropriate posting of staff in the health
sector. Workforce classification is needed to clarify functional responsibilities, kind of
services, required competencies and supervision arrangements in different settings such as
hospital, battalion or operation. Scope of services to act efficiently may reduce the required
workload and can improve the supervision arrangements in different setting. Which can
promote the job vacancy and increase the staff carrier pathways. Further more , retention of
workforce may addressing issues of workload , supervision, incentives, workplace safety and
benefits.

Quality

Need to prevent deficiencies in the quality of education and promote training of the medical
personal, mid wife and medical staff, particularly regarding the adequacy of faculty,
teaching , promote resources and clinical exposure in order to strengthen professional,
practical and clinical skills. Moreover all the leaders need to develop policy and strategies to

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ensure competency in leadership, management and delivery of person-centered care and
decentralized management and embed these in pre services, in service and curriculum of the
training modules.

Leadership and Financing

Leadership is needed for a coordinating unit in our Military hospital or Medical Battalion, as
well as similar mechanism within Ministry of Health and Sport. Continuity and sustainability
of the human resource for health effort including, Harmonized guidance for roles and
function of health workers and staff in each battalion and hospital. Overall rights and safety
for medical staff including regulation and accountability as well as human right for health and
safety of the medical personal in Military hospital, battalion and regiments. As a commander
of medical battalion , we need to give efficient standard of health care as well as efficient
production, recruitment, deployment and performance of Military healthcare workers.
Furthermore we need to improve health by approaching with other health care sectors such as
Ministry of Health and Sports, non-government organization (NGO) and other volunteer
medical staff and organizations. Health is multi-sectorial so that we need to promote all the
requirements by approaching with all the possible outcome of human resource from our
country.

Measures have been taken in the past to retain health workers in rural areas, such as
Developing health professional training schools outside of major cities; nursing and
Mid-wife schools at the States/Regions levels; recruiting local people to serve in their home,
states and villages; improving access to continuing professional education (CPE), such as
promoting the career pathways for BHS with years of service and completed trainings;
providing
in-service training for skill development and the provision of double salary for BHS working
in hard-to-reach areas.

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 Health 2008 2009 2010 2011 2016
Professional
General 2603 2474 2108 2108 1894
medical
practitioners
Specialist 271 329 294 294 908
Health 231 164 244 122 129
Assistants
Advanced - - - 27 23
practice nurses
Nursing 1660 1625 1620 360 547
(Bachelor)
Nursing - - - 1196 1402
(Diploma)
Midwives 749 807 879 913 1173
Dental workers 299 162 257 460 251
Pharmaceutical 395 299 298 228 216
workers
Laboratory and 322 278 263 159 154
medical
technicians
Physiotherapist - - 5 88 77
s
Public-Health - - - 285 80
specialist
Lady-health 123 114 105 61 158
visitors
Traditional 2478 2631 2838 - 3601
medicine
Total 9131 8883 8911 6301 10613

Fig: Number of HRH Graduates per year (2008-2017)

Source: HRDI 2017

Conclusion
Therefore, human resource management can be defined as the integrated set of roles,
functions, components, decisions, systems and processes in the whole system that need to
achieve and success by supporting the work performance of all stakeholders, policymakers,
government, employees, military personnel, clients and populations. In order to complete the

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mission and accomplish the goals and objectives in our medical battalion as a commander ,
we need to approach with mission, goals and strategies of the respondent of the health sector.
Human resource management is not merely the supportive unit, but also has a dominant place
in a health system. It is important to note that proper management of workforce and equity to
act and fair management of workforce may promote the result of the health system in our
military , working within the whole system.

References:
Hassani, S. A., Mobaraki, H., Bayat, M., & Mafimoradi, S. (2013). Right place of human resource
management in the reform of health sector. Iranian journal of public health, 42(1), 56-62.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23515234

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3595638/
Ishijima, H., Mapunda, M., Mndeme, M., Sukums, F., & Mlay, V. S. (2015). Challenges and
opportunities for effective adoption of HRH information systems in developing countries:
national rollout of HRHIS and TIIS in Tanzania. Human resources for health, 13, 48-48.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-015-0043-1
Sumah, A. M., & Baatiema, L. (2019). Decentralisation and Management of Human Resource for
Health in the Health System of Ghana: A Decision Space Analysis. International journal of
health policy and management, 8(1), 28-39. https://doi.org/10.15171/ijhpm.2018.88