On Being in Charge: A Guide to Management in Primary Health Care

Designed to help health workers, including nurses, midwives and medical assistants, improve their managerial skills, this training guide acknowledges the close link between good management and good health care. It shows how a wide range of simple managerial tools can be used to stretch scarce resources, whether through more efficient use of time or less wastage of drugs. Throughout the book, numerous exercises, practical examples, case studies, cartoons, charts and sample forms are used to help readers adopt a problem-solving attitude and relate advice and suggestions to their own daily problems. A 70-page collection of illustrative solutions to the exercises is included. 14 chapters are presented in four main parts, any one of which can be studied separately or as part of the whole, according to individual learning needs. An opening exercise helps readers diagnose their own managerial weaknesses and then turn to the appropriate chapters for study.