Providing health care under adverse conditions: Health personnel performance & individual coping strategies Paulo Ferrinho & Wim Van Lerberghe Studies in Health Services Organisation & Policy, 16, 2000 Studies in Health Services Organisation & Policy, 16, 1999 Series editors: W. Van Lerberghe, G. Kegels, V. De Brouwere ©ITGPress, Nationalestraat 155, B-2000 Antwerp, Belgium. E-mail :
[email protected] Paulo Ferrinho and Wim Van Lerberghe, ed. Providing health care under adverse circumstances: Health personnel performance & individual coping strategies D/2000/0450/3 ISBN 90-76070-18-0 ISSN 1370-6462 The publication of this book was made possible through the support of the Na- tionale Bank van België, INCO-DC research contracts nrs: IC18-CT96-0108, IC18-CT98-0347 and IC18-CT98-0346, and the Associação Garcia de Orta. Studies in HSO&P, 16, 2000 Performance, working conditions and coping strategies: an introduction Wim Van Lerberghe, Margaret Luck, Vincent De Brouwere, Guy Kegels and Paulo Ferrinho One of the basic reasons underlying health care reform efforts, however varied these may be in scope or comprehensiveness or speed or intensity, is the widely-shared suspicion that health services perform less well than they should and could do. As health systems are essentially made up of people, improving performance would first have to focus on them– even acknowl- edging that working environment plays a crucial role. The management of human resources is one of the most important de- terminants of the success or failure of health sector reform. Despite man- agement reforms and staff training efforts, many public sector organisations have had little success in improving the performance of their staff.