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Task shifting or shifting care practices? The impact of task shifting on patients’ experiences and health care arrangements in Swaziland

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Health Services Research, January 2017
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (90th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (91st percentile)

Mentioned by

blogs
1 blog
twitter
11 X users

Citations

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44 Dimensions

Readers on

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143 Mendeley
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Title
Task shifting or shifting care practices? The impact of task shifting on patients’ experiences and health care arrangements in Swaziland
Published in
BMC Health Services Research, January 2017
DOI 10.1186/s12913-016-1960-y
Pubmed ID
Authors

Thandeka Dlamini-Simelane, Eileen Moyer

Abstract

In the quest to achieve early HIV treatment goals, national HIV treatment programmes dependent on international funding have been dramatically redesigned over the last 5 years. Bottlenecks in treatment provision are conceived of as health system problems to be addressed via structural and logistical fixes (routine HIV testing, point-of-care equipment, nurse-led antiretroviral treatment initiation, and patient tracking). Patient perspectives are rarely taken into account when such fixes are being considered. Patients' therapeutic experiences often remain at the periphery during the planning stage and are only considered within the context of monitoring and evaluation audits once programmes are up and running. Ethnographic research was conducted in five clinics in Swaziland between 2012 and 2014. Participatory approaches were used to collect data; the first author trained as an HIV counsellor in order to collect observational data on the continuum of care, and conducted in-depth interviews with interlocutors involved at the different phases. Although recently adopted global HIV strategies have proven effective in scaling up treatment in Swaziland, our research demonstrates that the effort to expand services rapidly and to meet donor targets has also undermined patients' therapeutic experiences and overtaxed health workers, both of which are counterproductive to the ultimate goal of treatment scale-up. This article provides a perspective beyond the structural elements that impede universal treatment, and explores patient views and experiences of the strategies adopted to support further treatment expansion, with a particular focus on the shifting of key care and logistical tasks to expert clients. We argue that in the quest to achieve universal early access to treatment, both donors and states must go beyond strengthening health systems and strive to enhance the quality of patient experiences and take seriously health worker limitations.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 11 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 143 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 143 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 32 22%
Researcher 18 13%
Student > Ph. D. Student 15 10%
Student > Doctoral Student 11 8%
Student > Bachelor 8 6%
Other 26 18%
Unknown 33 23%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 31 22%
Nursing and Health Professions 25 17%
Social Sciences 15 10%
Psychology 6 4%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 4 3%
Other 15 10%
Unknown 47 33%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 19. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 26 February 2021.
All research outputs
#1,707,045
of 22,940,083 outputs
Outputs from BMC Health Services Research
#597
of 7,680 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#38,065
of 421,659 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Health Services Research
#11
of 127 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,940,083 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 92nd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 7,680 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.7. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 421,659 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 127 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its contemporaries.