Human Resources and Cultural Context:

Human Resources and Cultural Context: A Case Study Analysis

The Thomas, Fried, Johnson, and Stilwell case study (2010) revolves around the idea that within a healthcare setting, the variables of human resources like competency, communication, education encouragement, and lack of healthcare related training facilities within developing nations all play important parts in these nations' healthcare industries and the quality of care received by patients in outlying villages and field hospitals. The study itself was conducted in 2009 and was designed to help isolate the most common and influential variables within these healthcare settings in order to help direct funds and resources to programs that would benefit the most from them (Thomas, Fried, Johnson, and Stilwell, 2010). The problem, as it relates to the purpose of the study, is the fact that in many of these rural settings in developing nations, human resource providers and counselors have a difficult time isolating the key factors to a hospital's success or failure. Once these factors are identified and isolated from other variables, it is much easier to boost the human resource efforts in certain ways to obtain the best growth of positive results.

The Global Alliance for Pre-Service Education (GAPS) contains a wealth of literature resources pertaining to this issue (Thomas, Fried, Johnson, and Stilwell, 2010). Many of them come from outside perspectives, which are not always adept at identifying the factors that contribute to the lack of proper healthcare in field hospitals. From a literature review perspective, the best pieces of information and the most insight often comes from those authors and researchers who are part of the developing nation's population or cultural context (Salkind, 2003). These people can much more successfully and effectively relay information through literature in order to affect resource development and change.

The population sample for the case study consisted of 273 individual GAPS members from 49 countries worldwide. Approximately 65% of these people were living and working in low-resource settings in Africa, Asia and Central America. The remainder is comprised of members of universities and cooperating agencies in the United States, Canada and Europe (Thomas, Fried, Johnson, and Stilwell, 2010). The case study measurements consisted of structured group and panel discussions on topics relative to human resource direction and capabilities and ways in which human resource officers and counselors, many representing GAPS interests can be of more help within the rural hospital and clinical settings. These focus groups were structured so that the patients and the healthcare professionals alike had equal say in helping to discuss and determine a more successful way forward for countries that did not have adequate physical resources. Data was collected and analyzed as these study and focus group discussions took place (Thomas, Fried, Johnson, and Stilwell, 2010). The data was also compiled and sent to many different human resource offices and operations in order to gain unique insight from all corners of the world. These compilations of conversations helped to identify the contributing factors to rural clinic success in the 49 different countries while, at the same time, offering up examples and ideas for how improvements could be made.

The conclusions were relatively different among each country or population that was analyzed, depending on the specificities of the rural areas in question. Overall, the case study concluded that more effective, accurate communication coupled with greater expertise and skills competencies were able to overcome the lack of physical and medical resources in nearly every situation (Thomas, Fried, Johnson, and Stilwell, 2010). This is to say that healthcare professionals who had more experience, training, and education were able to do more with less, and help others to become more competent in the face of equipment and drug shortages. The case study was successful in that the highlighted areas of weakness and strength were used to develop a more accurate and comprehensive model of rural hospital and clinic operation benefiting tens of thousands of patients around the world.