ABCD Analysis of Task Shifting – An optimum Alternative Solution to Professional Healthcare Personnel Shortage

Abstract

Task shifting is an optimum alternate solution in the healthcare system to address the acute shortage of professionally qualified healthcare workers in developing countries. This will temporarily help in solving the big problem of providing quality and timely health services to the needy people. Despite many trained health care professionals, our health care system is struggling to provide optimum services to the patients due to many reasons including the high burden of infectious diseases, emigration of trained professionals, difficult working conditions, and low motivation by country governments. Even though, the permanent solution to this problem is to create more professional doctors by increasing training courses, training facilities through modifying government policies and enhancing resources to do so, such actions and resultant solutions take a long time to realize in practice. Hence a quick optimum solution is needed to address the critical shortage of trained healthcare professionals. It is logically argued and in many places practically proven that out of many alternatives, the best alternative for healthcare executives in any hospital of primary health centres is the strategic decision of thinking and implementing the so called strategy of taskshifting. In this paper, we have analysed the process of task-shifting by considering its advantages, benefits, constraints, and disadvantages using an analysing technique called ABCD analysing framework. As per the ABCD framework, the various determinant issues of related to the task shifting for organizational health service performance are identified using focus group method are : (1) Organizational Issue, (2) Alternative Acceptors Issue, (3) Donor Physicians Issue, (4) Patients and Relatives Issue (5) Societal Issue, and (6) Country Issue. Each determinant issue has sub-issues called key attributes used for analyzing the advantages, benefits, constraints, and disadvantages which are the four major constructs of the framework. The factors affecting the various determinant issues of for task shifting for each key issues under four constructs are derived and 172 critical constituent elements (CCE) of these factors are listed under the ABCD constructs.