Analysing and reporting the community service experiences of doctors and dentists

Africa Health Placements (AHP) has conducted an exit survey among the 2009 cohort of community service doctors and dentists. Epi Result was asked to do the actual analyses and write the report, which included a literature review on the experiences of community services officers in South Africa.

Africa Health Placements (AHP) supports and enhances healthcare systems in Africa, by finding, placing and retaining the right people for the job. Their aim is to fill the gaps, and ultimately to help people to view the public sector (and civil society organisations working in public service) in a new light – as truly viable and exciting career options.

Compulsory community serve (CS) was introduced in 1998 for doctors and in 2000 for dentists. This means that all newly qualified professionals are obliged by law to undertake a remunerated 12-month period of service in a government institution. They are only registered to practice independently in South Africa once the CS period is completed. AHP has conducted an exit survey among the 2009 cohort of CS doctors and dentists with the aim to review their experiences, the factors that are related to these experiences and the relation with their plans for the future.

The database including the information of this survey was ready in the beginning of 2009, but AHP did not have the capacity to do the actual data-analysis. So initially Epi Result was asked to make an analysis plan, do the actual analyses and write up the results. And in addition a literature review had to be conducted on the experiences of community services officers in South Africa.

At a later stage it was decided that Epi Result would also be responsible for the writing of other sections of the report including the summary, introduction, part of the methods, discussion/conclusion and way forward. As I consultant I think it is very important when you have done the analyses and written the results section, also to write the discussion/conclusion, to make sure that the results are interpreted and compared with other studies in a correct way.

The data-collection for the 2010 cohort already had to start during this process. Otherwise it is very useful to take the experiences with the questionnaire and resulting dataset into account to review the questionnaire. The intention is to ask Epi Result to take care of the new report as well.