Number and/or percent of health workers who have received in-service training or continuous professional development in family planning or a related topic of interest

Definition:

The number or percent of health workers who have received in-service training (IST) or continuous professional development (CPD) in family planning (FP) or a related topic of interest defined by the program during a specific period (e.g., in the past six or twelve months). “In-service training” refers to any training provided to health workers who are currently employed in the health workforce to develop or update skills relevant to their job. “Continuous professional development” refers to the requirement by licensing bodies as a condition of renewing licensure that health workers accumulate professional credits to keep their skills up to date and perform to current standards.

As a percent, this indicator is calculated as:

(Number of health workers who received IST or CPD in FP or a related topical area with program support in the specified period/Total number of health workers in the health workforce during that same period) x 100

A complementary indicator is “At least one staff member providing a family planning service trained in the past two years in some aspect of family planning.” The source of this indicator is the Service Provision Assessment (SPA).

Data Requirement(s):

Number of health workers currently in the health workforce; number of health workers who, with program support, received IST or CPD in FP

Data Source(s):

Project records, national training database, human resource information system (HRIS)

Purpose:

This indicator monitors the number of health workers and managers that have already entered into the health workforce that receive training to develop a specific FP skill, such as technical updates. The field of health is constantly evolving and new national and international standards are being introduced. This indicator provides information on how many health workers in the country have received training with project assistance to keep their FP skills up-to-date.

Issue(s):

This indicator does not measure the quality of the IST or CPD.

Keywords:

health system strengthening (HSS), training