As from March 2017, BIREME has developed a project to promote knowledge management in Human Resources in Health (Recursos Humanos en Salud, RHS) together with the Technical Unit of Human Resources in Health of PAHO/WHO Brazil.
The primary objective of the project is to contribute to establishing a new agenda of RHS Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, by identifying and analyzing the scientific and technical production on this topic, expanding the record of non-conventional literature on RHS, such as reports, guides, policies and other technical publications, in addition to developing strategic actions with the RHS Observatory Networks of many countries.
The main themes to be considered regarding RHS include employment, education, human resources planning, regulation, management and administration, expenses, unionism, public policies, healthcare teams and information systems. According to Dr. Mónica Padilla, coordinator of the Human Capacities for Health Unit of PAHO/WHO Brazil, “these topics studied and produced as part of the design and management processes of RHS development policies in the countries of the Americas, need to be rescued and made available. This knowledge contains the collective learning in this field of the Americas and its systematization will open the doors for a new level of management and use”.
Some analyses have already been made about the scientific and technical production on RHS and are available at the databases MEDLINE and LILACS, and at the PAHO and WHO institutional repositories. They show the great representativeness and importance of such production in the gray literature, demonstrating the need to strengthen management of this type of content in government and teaching organizations, by means of interoperation of the institutional repositories with LILACS.
On October 23 to 26, a workshop was held at BIREME and gathered experts from Brazil, El Salvador and Peru. The aim was to train them on processes of cataloguing and indexing of non-conventional materials about RHS. Therefore, this crucial knowledge can be used develop a digital repository on this topic, integrated to the database LILACS and to the Virtual Health Library (VHL), systematizing the recording, organizations and to dissemination of such contents.
The workshop participants met Dr. Mónica Padilla on October 27, at PAHO/WHO Brazil, and discussed about the progress of infometrics analysis in 20 years of RHS-related publications that are available at MEDLINE and LILACS, as well as about the future projections to establish a national and regional working agenda. This process, developed in coordination with the Ministry of Health of Brazil, will be a key input for the new work and research agenda of the RHS Brazil’s Observatories Network.
One of the results expected for the beginning of 2018 is the launching of a website, which – through an interface search – will enable retrieving and accessing the main publications on RHS that are produced by a network of specialists, organizations and observatories in Latin American and Caribbean. The website will be integrated with collection of scientific and technical information on this topic, which is already mapped at MEDLINE and LILACS. Using these contents, some indicators will be created, promoting new analyses and studies that will contribute to discussions and preparation of new strategic agendas and policies on human resources in health.