Number or percent of graduates of preservice education programs who are newly employed in the health workforce

Definition:

The number or percentage of graduates of PSE programs who enter the health workforce annually. A “graduate” is someone who is granted an academic degree, diploma, or certificate in a health cadre. “Newly employed” pertains to a recently trained and graduated health workers who have signed a contract for employment in the health sector for the first time, and who have reported to their duty station.

As a percent, this indicator is calculated as:

(Number of graduates of PSE programs who were hired in the health workforce in the reporting period/Total number of graduates of PSE programs in the reporting period) x 100

Data Requirement(s):

Data Source(s):

School records, surveys, human resources information system (HRIS)

Purpose:

This is a health system strengthening indicator to track trends of health workers entering the formal health workforce. It measures the rate of entry into the health workforce by new graduates. Newly-trained health workers may fail to enter the workforce for a number of reasons, including insufficient vacancies, slow hiring processes, or poor compensation factors. Health policy planners and decision-makers use information on the workforce entry rate to inform decisions on the number of new health workers to train and whether to reform the compensation and hiring structures.

Issue(s):

This indicator can not determine if the newly-employed graduates were hired for the right positions (i.e., positions that best suit the individuals’ skills set) and in the right places (i.e., where there is greatest needed for skilled health workers).

Keywords:

health system strengthening (HSS), training