Management education/training programme of Brazilian Ministry of Health

One of the challenges of Brazilian the Unified Health System is related to the quality of management in local and regional level. There are approximately 100,000 public-health professionals working in managerial positions and most of them have inadequate knowledge in management. For this reason, the Ministry of Health considers education and training of human resources one of top priorities of its Health Policy and launched the National Managerial Education/Training Programme, in 2007, in order to improve Healthcare Services. The purpose of this Programme is to strength health workforce in managerial process, qualifying 100,000 health professionals and the guidelines are (a) development of programme are based on Continuing Health Education Policy; (b) establishment of partnership with local and regional healthcare administrators; (c) integration with educational institutions (Universities, Institutes and others); and (d) offer a range of short and postgraduate courses, which use distance education and in-service training. The Programme is coordinated by the Secretariat of Management of Education and Work in Health/Ministry of Health and a committee composed by the National Council of Secretaries of Health (CONASS) and National Council of Municipal Health Secretariats (CONASEMS). The committee’s action plan is: (a) promote regional workshops in order to identify needs in managerial skills of HR and potential Institutions that could carry out education/training programme, in this way it would enable State and Municipalities to develop projects to solve their problems; and (b) support Academic Institutions to offer courses in a national level, mainly for the States that may not be able to conduct their own courses.