Capacity and practical skill of health statistical staff and training needs

Abstract

Objectives of the study were to assess the capacity and practical skills of the health statistical staff along with their training needs. A cross-sectional study was conducted in health facilities of 3 provinces Ha Nam, Bac Giang, Bac Ninh divided into three levels: province, district and commune. 104 health statistical staffs completed questionnaires. The results indicated that human resource for the health management information system was at low qualification. Only 29% of statistical staffs had graduation or post – grad-uate education, especially, the rate of personnel trained in statistic was very low (2.9%). The majority of staffs did the statistical activities as part-time job and the average number of years working in statistical field was 6. The capacity to use ICT for reporting and storing data was quite low at 12.4% and 7.9% respectively. The capacity to analyze and use statistical data was poor, only less than 20% of total con-sidered themselves “good” at data accuracy checking and interpreting the result. Only 35.6 % of health staffs were able to interpret charts and a negligible amount of people could infer the reason of those findings. In conclusion, it is important to provide new and qualified human resources and there is a large need for training the existing staff in order to improve the performance of the health statistical information.