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This literature review aims to assess the current research on healthcare job availability and skilled professionals. The objective of this research is to identify challenges caused by the imbalance between healthcare service demand and qualified professionals and propose potential solutions and future research directions.

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method was employed as the guiding framework for conducting this review. A qualitative research design analyzed 38 peer-reviewed, evidence-based research works from 50 journal publications. Inclusion criteria focused on empirical studies, observational research and comprehensive reviews published within the last ten years. Thematic and discourse analysis categorized themes and factors explored in selected publications.

The findings highlight significant challenges in the healthcare sector regarding job availability and skilled professionals. Developed countries face understaffed healthcare facilities, resulting in increased workloads and compromised care. Developing countries experience high rates of unemployment among healthcare graduates due to limited resources and mentorship.

Improving educational infrastructure, expanding training opportunities and increasing healthcare investments are crucial for nurturing a skilled workforce. Implementing effective retention policies, fostering international collaborations and addressing socioeconomic determinants can create a sustainable job market.

The healthcare sector faces critical challenges in balancing job availability and skilled professionals. Strategic solutions are proposed to create a sustainable and equitable healthcare workforce. By implementing recommendations and conducting further research, access to quality healthcare and global public health outcomes can be improved.

This study aims to extend the literature on psychological contracts, employee mental health, self-control and equity sensitivity among employees in Ghana.

Data for this study came from a sample of 484 employees from an organisation in the telecommunication sector of Ghana. The details of the study were discussed with employees after which they were given the choice to participate in the study.

The present study found that psychological contract breach is directly associated with mental health and indirectly related to mental health through equity sensitivity and self-control.

The findings suggest that psychological contracts are important aspects of the employment relationship that could be used to enhance employee mental health. Furthermore, enhancing employees’ self-control and resolving issues of individuals high on equity sensitivity are effective ways that organisations can deploy to sustain mental health in the face of psychological contract breaches.

This study aims to deepen the understanding of the challenges and implications entailed by deploying mobile clinics in conflict zones to reach populations affected by violence and cut off from health-care services.

This research combines an integrated literature review and an instrumental case study. The literature review comprises two targeted reviews to provide insights: one on conflict zones and one on mobile clinics. The case study describes the process and challenges faced throughout a mobile clinic deployment during and after the Iraq War. The data was gathered using mixed methods over a two-year period (2017–2018).

Armed conflicts directly impact the populations’ health and access to health care. Mobile clinic deployments are often used and recommended to provide health-care access to vulnerable populations cut off from health-care services. However, there is a dearth of peer-reviewed literature documenting decision support tools for mobile clinic deployments.

This study highlights the gaps in the literature and provides direction for future research to support the development of valuable insights and decision support tools for practitioners.

In this paper, the authors examine the strategies used to reduce labour costs in three public hospitals in South Africa, which were effective and why. In the democratic era, after the revelations of large-scale corruption, the authors ask whether their case studies provide lessons for how public service institutions might re-make themselves, under circumstances of austerity.

A comparative qualitative case study approach, collecting data using a combination of interviews with managers, focus group discussions and interviews with shop stewards and staff was used.

Management in two hospitals relied on their financial power, divisions between unions and employees' loyalty. They lacked the insight to manage different actors, and their efforts to outsource services and draw on the Extended Public Works Program failed. They failed to support staff when working beyond their scope of practice, reducing employees' willingness to take on extra responsibilities. In the remaining hospital, while previous management had been removed due to protests by the unions, the new CEO provided stability and union–management relations were collaborative. Her legitimate power enabled unions and management to agree on appropriate cost cutting strategies.

Finding an appropriate balance between the new reality of reduced financial resources and the needs of staff and patients, requires competent unions and management, transparency and trust to develop legitimate power; managing in an authoritarian manner, without legitimate power, reduces organisational capacity. Ensuring a fair and orderly process to replace ineffective management is key, while South Africa grows cohorts of competent managers and builds managerial experience.

Climate hazards in the form of cyclones are projected to become more intense under the pressures of future climate change. These changes represent a growing hazard to low lying coastal cities like Beira, Mozambique. In 2019, Beira experienced the devastating impact of Cyclone Idai. One of the many impacts resulting from this Cyclone was disrupted drinking water access. This investigation explores the distribution of Cyclone Idai’s impact on drinking water access via an environmental justice lens, exploring how preexisting water access characteristics may have predisposed households to the impacts of Cyclone Idai in Beria.

Relying on household survey data collected in Beira, the investigation applied a decision tree algorithm to investigate how drinking water disruption was distributed across the household survey sample using these preexisting vulnerabilities.

The investigation found that households that mainly relied upon piped water sources and experienced inconsistent access to water in the year prior to Cyclone Idai were more likely to experience disrupted drinking water access immediately after Cyclone Idai. The results indicate that residents in formal areas of Beira, largely reliant upon piped water supply, experienced higher rates of disrupted drinking water access following Cyclone Idai.

These findings question a commonly held assumption that informal areas are more vulnerable to climate hazards, like cyclones, than formal areas of a city. The findings support the inclusion of informal settlements in the design of climate change adaptation strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of sports sponsorship on brand equity using two managerially related outcomes: price premium and market share.

This study uses a best–worst discrete choice experiment (BWDCE) and compares the outcome with that of the purchase intention scale, an established probabilistic measure of purchase intention. The total sample consists of 409 fans of three soccer teams sponsored by three different competing brands: Nike, Adidas and Puma.

With sports sponsorship, fans were willing to pay more for the sponsor’s product, with the sponsoring brand obtaining the highest market share. Prominent brands generally performed better than less prominent brands. The best–worst scaling method was also 35% more accurate in predicting brand choice than a purchase intention scale.

Future research could use the same method to study other types of sponsors, such as title sponsors or other product categories.

Sponsorship managers can use this methodology to assess the return on investment in sponsorship engagement.

Prior sponsorship studies on brand equity tend to ignore market share or fans’ willingness to pay a price premium for a sponsor’s goods and services. However, these two measures are crucial in assessing the effectiveness of sponsorship. This study demonstrates how to conduct such an assessment using the BWDCE method. It provides a clearer picture of sponsorship in terms of its economic value, which is more managerially useful.

This study aims to examine how an educational intervention, using the lens of the LEADS framework, can influence the development of primary care doctors’ leadership skills in Aceh, Indonesia. In order to persevere in the face of inadequate resources and infrastructure, particularly in rural and remote settings of low- and middle‐income countries, physicians require strong leadership skills. However, there is a lack of information on leadership development in these settings.

This study applied an educational intervention consisting of a two-day workshop. The authors evaluated the impact of the workshop on participants’ knowledge and skill by combining quantitative pre- and post-intervention questionnaires (based on Levels 1 and 2 of Kirkpatrick’s model) with qualitative post-intervention in-depth interviews, using a phenomenological approach and thematic analysis.

The workshop yielded positive results, as evidenced by participants’ increased confidence to apply and use the information and skills acquired during the workshop. Critical success factors were as follows: participants were curiosity-driven; the use of multiple learning methodologies that attracted participants; and the use of authentic scenarios as a critical feature of the program.

The intervention may offer a preliminary model for improving physician leadership skills in rural and remote settings by incorporating multiple teaching approaches and considering local cultural norms.

Value-based healthcare suggested using patient-reported information to complement the information available in the medical records and administrative healthcare data to provide insights into patients' perceptions of satisfaction, experience and self-reported outcomes. However, little attention has been devoted to questions about factors fostering the use of patient-reported information to create value at the system level.

Action research design is carried out to elicit possible triggers using the case of patient-reported experience and outcome data for breast cancer women along their clinical pathway in the clinical breast network of Tuscany (Italy).

The case shows that communication and engagement of multi-stakeholder representation are needed for making information actionable in a multi-level, multispecialty care pathway organized in a clinical network; moreover, political and managerial support from higher level governance is a stimulus for legitimizing the use for quality improvement. At the organizational level, an external facilitator disclosing and discussing real-world uses of collected data is a trigger to link measures to action. Also, clinical champion(s) and clear goals are key success factors. Nonetheless, resource munificent and dedicated information support tools together with education and learning routines are enabling factors.

Current literature focuses on key factors that impact performance information use often considering unidimensional performance and internal sources of information. The use of patient/user-reported information is not yet well-studied especially in supporting quality improvement in multi-stakeholder governance. The work appears relevant for the implications it carries, especially for policymakers and public sector managers when confronting the gap in patient-reported measures for quality improvement.

This paper explores the effect of perceived service quality, trust, perceived value and perceived cost on patient satisfaction and loyalty as well as exploring the moderating role of the sociodemographic factors.

The data were gathered from 462 patients via a structured questionnaire, while structural equation modeling was utilized for the analysis.

Results indicated that trust, perceived value and patient satisfaction have important roles in shaping the patient loyalty, while patient satisfaction was found to fully mediate the patient’s perceived service quality. Loyalty relationship was also found to partially mediate the trust–loyalty relationship. Nonetheless, the patient’s satisfaction–loyalty relationship was found to be only moderated by the age factor.

Implications are provided to the Egyptian private hospitals in order for them to formulate improvement plans as well as set higher standards of conduct.

This original research is the first one, up to the researcher knowledge, that explores the drivers of patient satisfaction in the private hospitals in Egypt.

This paper aims to appraise the effectiveness of gender quotas in breaking the glass ceiling for women on boards (WoBs) in companies that are legally obliged to comply with quotas (listed companies and state-owned companies, LP) and in those that are not (unlisted companies and nonstate-owned companies, NLNP). Furthermore, it investigates the glass cliff phenomenon, according to which women are more likely to be appointed to apical positions in underperforming companies.

A balanced panel data of the top 116 Italian companies by total assets, which are present in both 2010 and 2017, is used for estimating ANOVA tests across sectors and fixed-effects panel regression models.

WoBs significantly increased in both the LP and the NLNP companies, and this increase was greater in the financial sector. Furthermore, the relationship between the percentage of WoBs and firm performance is not linear but depends on the financial corporate health. Specifically, the situation in which a woman ascends to a leadership position in challenging circumstances where the risk of failure is high (glass cliff phenomenon) is only present in companies with the lowest performance in the sample, in other words, when negative values of Roe and negative or zero values of Roa occur together.

These findings have relevant policy implications that encourage the adoption of gender quotas even in specific top positions, such as CEO or president, as this could lead to a “double spillover effect” both vertically, that is, in other job positions, and horizontally, toward other companies not targeted by quotas. Practical interventions to support women in glass cliff positions, on the other hand, relate to the extent of supervisor mentoring and support to prevent women from leaving director roles and strengthen their chances for career advancement.

The authors explore the ability of gender quotas to break through the glass ceiling in companies that are not legally obliged to do so, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, the glass cliff phenomenon in the Italian context.