The Strengthening Human Resources for Health (HRH) project was a 5-year (2012–2017) bilateral cooperative agreement funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with an overall goal of improving the status of human resources for health in Ethiopia. The objectives of the project included improved human resources for health management; increased availability of midwives, anesthetists, health extension workers, and essential health workers; improved quality of training of health workers; and evidence generated to inform policies and practices related to human resources for health.

A task analysis study was conducted by the HRH project in March 2015 to determine needs and gaps in the education, practice, and competencies of five health care cadres: medical doctors (MDs), health officers (HOs), nurses, medical laboratory professionals (MLPs), and pharmacy professionals. The findings would be used to inform programmatic efforts to strengthen the education, practice, and regulation of these cadres and, in turn, strengthen professional services. Therefore, the main objective of the task analysis study was to identify the needs and gaps in the education, practice, and competence of HOs, nurses, MDs, pharmacy professionals, and MLPs.

This task analysis study employed a cross-sectional design to analyze tasks performed on the job by recently graduated health professionals (more than 6 months and less than 5 years in practice). A two-stage stratified cluster sample design was used to ensure the representativeness of the data in the country. In the first stage, public health facilities (both hospitals and health centers) and regulatory or research organizations (pharmaceutical agencies, regulatory authorities, and research centers or institutions; hereinafter, “regulatory/research organizations”) were selected. In the second stage, targeted health professionals were selected within the selected facilities and organizations.

All nine regions and two city administrations of Ethiopia were included in this study. In that regard, the sample of public health facilities and targeted health professionals was selected randomly from lists of the respective sampling units and included: 198 MDs (general practitioners) from 66 public hospitals, 224 HOs, 224 nurses, 224 MLPs, and 224 pharmacy professionals from 19 public hospitals and 93 health centers, 25 MLPs from 5 regulatory/research organizations and 15 pharmacy professionals from 3 regulatory/research organizations.

This task analysis study measured three key elements related to each cadre’s job tasks. These were: how often the respondent performed a task in his/her work, how critical the performance of a task was in terms of patient/public health outcome, and how well the health care worker believed that s/he was able to perform the task. The number of tasks analyzed per cadre was 222 (MDs), 189 (HOs), 184 (nurses), 178 (MLPs), and 151 (pharmacy professionals). Response data were analyzed using SPSS version 23 and computed frequencies and percentages.

The study revealed tasks that were frequently performed by health professionals in their current practice. Highly important tasks and self-perceived level of competence in performance were identified to inform decision-makers for revising and developing curricula, scopes of practice, and licensure examinations. The task analysis used self-reported responses by participants, but observation of actual practice was not done and is beyond the scope of this study. Therefore, these responses could be subject to under-or over-reporting due to inaccurate memory or bias toward social desirability.

• Task analysis
• medical doctors
• health officers
• Nurses
• Medical Laboratory Professionals
• and Pharmacy professionals
• Human resource for health
• Cross-sectional
• Regions
• Public health facilities
• research organizations
• two stage
• nationally representative

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This dataset includes basic biographical data which were collected from each participant, including gender, age, type of facility, district, level of education program (college, university), qualification level (diploma, degree), year of graduation, and time in service. Furthermore, the dataset also includes task lists with three measurement variables: how frequently was the task performed, how critical was the time and effective performance of the task to the patient and public health outcomes, and how well did respondents feel that they were able to perform the task.

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