Engagement with partners is a leading practice in health workforce planning: What health leaders need to know.

Workforce planning ensures that the health workforce is aligned with current and future population needs. Engagement with partners and knowledge users is a leading practice in planning and is essential for planning to be successful. The goal of this study was to explore the considerations and processes involved in integrating engagement into workforce planning. Through a case study of primary care workforce planning in Toronto, we address the role of engagement, how it can be integrated into planning, and how lessons from engagement support spread and scale of effective workforce planning. In the course of engagement with five Ontario Health Teams between September 2023 and February 2024, we learned that there is considerable enthusiasm for planning, but that support is needed, and that engagement guides investment and strengthens relationships. We offer guidance for leaders with respect to actualizing engagement and building capacity for health workforce planning across the health system.

Work & life stress experienced by professional workers during the pandemic: a gender-based analysis.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted work and home life exacerbating pre-existing stressors and introducing new ones. These impacts were notably gendered. In this paper, we explore the different work and home life related stressors of professional workers specifically as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic through the gender-based analysis of two pan Canadian surveys: The Canadian Community Health Survey (2019, 2020, 2021) and the Healthy Professional Worker Survey (2021). Analyses revealed high rates of work stress among professional workers compared to other workers and this was particularly notable for women. Work overload emerged as the most frequently selected source of work stress, followed by digital stress, poor work relations, and uncertainty. Similar trends were noted in life stress among professional workers, particularly women. Time pressure consistently stood out as the primary source of non-work stress, caring for children and physical and mental health conditions. These findings can help to develop more targeted and appropriate workplace mental health promotion initiatives that are applicable to professional workers taking gender more fully into consideration.

The pathway from mental health, leaves of absence, and return to work of health professionals: Gender and leadership matter.

Health professions are ranked among the most stressful occupations and have a much higher likelihood of absenteeism from work. In this article, we present findings from four health professional case studies in our Healthy Professional Worker partnership, involving surveys with 1,860 respondents and 163 interviews with nurses, physicians, midwives, and dentists conducted between December 2020 and April 2021. We found that the pathway from mental health experiences through to the decision to take a leave of absence and return to work differed between the health professions and that both gender and leadership matter greatly. There is a need to de-stigmatize mental health issues and encourage greater awareness and support from supervisors and colleagues. Leadership can play an important role in mitigating mental health issues, and as such investment in both leadership training and mentorship are important first steps in acting upon our research findings.

Self-reported vision health status among older people in the Kassena-Nankana District, Ghana.

BACKGROUND: If current trends continue, Ghana's aged population will increase in the coming decades. Currently, there is little knowledge on the health of the aged in Ghana. Research on vision problems among this group is virtually non-existent. This research gap needs to be filled immediately in order to promote the general health among older people in Ghana. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study was to analyse vision health and its determinants among the older adult population in a district in one of the poorest regions in Ghana - the Kassena-Nankana district. METHODS: Data were obtained from the WHO multi-country studies unit (SAGE). A total of 4,294 people over the age of 50 responded to the survey. Data analysis was conducted using Stata statistical package. The aim of the analysis was to identify the prevalence of self-reported vision problems and assistive device use. Age, level of education, marital status, living arrangement, socio-economic status and proportion of people aged 50 and over in a household were used as determinants of vision health. RESULTS: In total, 54 and 63% (p-value, 0.00) of men and women reported having far-sightedness, while 35% of men and 40.6% of women reported having near-sightedness (p-value, 0.00). In total, 33.5% of men and 38.6% of women reported having both near-sightedness and far-sightedness (p-value, 0.00). Of those who reported having either vision problems, 2.9% reported the use of visual assistive devices. Men had a higher assistive device use of 4.5% compared to 2.1% among women (p=0.002). Age and household socio-economic status was positively associated with reporting vision problems and assistive device use, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The results from this analysis showed that despite the high reporting of vision problems, only 2.9% reported using assistive devices. This outcome shows that there is a need to prevent vision problems and increase access to assistive devices among older people in the Kassena-Nankana district in Ghana.