Publications by authors named "D Blaauw"

Introduction: The knowledge gaps on the experiences of early career health professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic informed this study, which examined their vaccination status, personal and workplace experiences in South Africa.

Methods: ts longitudinal tudy to etermine the peration of the labour arket among its health professional graduates (WiSDOM), a prospective longitudinal cohort study established in 2017, consists of eight health professional groups of clinical associates, dentists, doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, oral hygienists, pharmacists and physiotherapists. As a part of annual follow-up surveys, we examined the personal and workplace experiences and the vaccination status of cohort members during the COVID-19 pandemic years: 2020 until 2022.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study examined the impact of COVID-19 on essential maternal, neonatal, and child health (MNCH) services in Gauteng, South Africa, focusing on service utilization and health outcomes during and after the pandemic lockdown period.
  • - A quasi-experimental interrupted time series design analyzed key MNCH indicators from March 2019 to February 2021, revealing significant declines in primary healthcare visits and postnatal care during the lockdown, but some indicators showed signs of recovery afterward.
  • - While certain health outcomes related to service delivery were not significantly affected, the overall conclusion highlights that COVID-19 severely disrupted MNCH services in Gauteng, posing challenges for future healthcare planning.
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Background: There is substantial evidence on the associations between a positive nurse practice environment and improved nurse and patient outcomes, as well as the factors that mediate these associations, in high-income countries and in hospital settings. The knowledge gaps in African and primary health care settings motivated this empirical study.

Objective: The objective of this study was to examine the impact of the dimensions of the nurse practice environment, specifically human resource management, foundations for nursing care, and participation in clinic affairs, on job outcomes and standards of care.

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Progress has been made to scale oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) as part of combination HIV prevention, with the WHO recommending differentiated, simplified and demedicalized approaches. This study explored user preferences for components of a PrEP service delivery package, through a discrete choice experiment (DCE) among 307 people accessing primary healthcare services in South Africa between November 2022 and February 2023. Attributes included were: Source of information about HIV prevention and PrEP; Site for PrEP initiation and follow-up; Frequency of follow-up; PrEP pick-up point; HIV testing whilst using PrEP; Contact between appointments.

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Objective: Multiple job holding (MJH), or working in more than one paid job simultaneously, is a common characteristic of health labour markets. The study examined the extent (prevalence), forms and factors influencing MJH among public sector medical doctors, professional nurses and rehabilitation therapists in two South African provinces.

Design: A cross-sectional, analytical study.

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