Table 2 Illustrative quotes on recommended practices for recruiting and retaining health workers in implementing UHC in the Philippines
Quote ID | Recommended practice | Quotation |
|---|---|---|
B1 | Scholarship and return service program | “Then we also have scholarship programs right now. This is primarily for nursing students. If we have, say, one student, he/she took up nursing as a scholar, because our nursing program is four years, then he/she should serve in our hospital for four years. One (year of scholarship)-is-to-one (year of return service). He/she cannot resign but he/she has a salary. We are guaranteed to have five nurses every year. This is a full scholarship. Many applicants try to avail of the said scholarship. This is our way of having, ensuring that we have enough nurses in the future.” - Private tertiary facility administrator from an urban area |
B2 | Free tuition for dependents | “The good thing with us is we are backed up by the university. If you are working with us, even if you have 10 children, you do not have to pay for their tuition until college. You only have to be regular. After the five probationary months once you become regular, even if you have 10 children, from grade school until college, they have free tuition.” - Private tertiary facility administrator from an urban area |
B3 | Free tuition for dependents | “And you, if you do not have a child, you can assign a relative (child) to avail of the educational benefit, if you are unmarried and childless.” - Private tertiary facility administrator from an urban area |
B4 | Free tuition for postgraduate degrees | “Also, we have professional development opportunities. If you are an employee here and you want to take your master’s (degree), that’s free.” - Private tertiary facility administrator from an urban area |
B5 | Specialist training overseas | “We send many of our staff for fellowship overseas because there are no opportunities here. For example, for liver cancer, our surgeons, we bring them to Korea or India. For our intensivists, who is part of the multidisciplinary transplant team, right? So, we send them to Singapore, the other one is in Thailand for diagnostic pathology. They are spread out. It’s just that we are counting the years when they will come back. And then they have a contract. They have to return.” - Administrator of a public tertiary facility in an urban area |
B6 | Training of personnel on UHC and embedding it in onboarding meetings | “You will see in our documentation that (as early as) 2020, we have already been talking about UHC. Now, it is difficult because they have a different understanding about it and it is difficult to talk to the clients about UHC if you yourself do not know what it is. That is what we targeted; we want to make sure that our personnel know about UHC. We have evaluation, post-evaluation to make sure that they understood. At first, only 50% had a good grasp (of UHC). We did it virtually (because of the pandemic). Then we instituted it among the new hires. When you are newly hired (in our facility), you have an orientation which includes Universal Health Coverage. It is an ongoing, continuous process so that all our employees will eventually be aware of the UHC Act. What is the UHC Act, they already know what that is.” - Administrator of a public tertiary facility in an urban area |