Health workforce status in India: A qualitative analysis of parliamentary questions documented in the last two decades.

Abstract

Unequal health workforce distribution is a major issue in India that causes health inequality and difficulties in health delivery. There have to be optimal numbers of all health workers including doctors, staff nurses, and paramedical staff like radiographers, pharmacists, attenders, ANMs, and ANWs for the effective working of health Institutions. The parliament is a powerful organization in a democratic country where member representatives from different parts of the country can raise questions or debates on crucial issues of the nation. These submitted documents form a major source of data for policy analysis. Questions on health workforce shortage were collected from the official websites of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha and thematic analysis was done with inductive reasoning. Themes and subthemes were categorized and questions were coded into nodes using Max QDA software. A total of 1016 questions (0.18%) were asked with 577 (0.17%) questions from Lok Sabha and 441 (0.19%) from Rajya Sabha. A total of 208 unique parliamentarians from 26 unique states/UTs had submitted questions on the current theme. The questions were of competing interests with the majority of questions on recruitment in the government health sector and strategies needed for balancing the inequality in workforce distribution. More questions with stronger representation are needed for the sub-themes of rural and tribal scenarios, shortage of specialists, women staff, and paramedical staff, which could help in correcting the lacunae in the national healthcare system.