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Background. The performance of midlevel health workers is a critical lever for strengthening health systems and redressing inequalities in underserved areas. Auxiliary nurses form the largest cadre of health workers in Guatemala. In rural settings, they provide essential services to vulnerable communities, and thus have great potential to address priority health needs. This paper examines auxiliary nurses' motivation and satisfaction, and the coping strategies they use to respond to challenges they confront in their practice.

Methods. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 14 auxiliary nurses delivering health services in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala.

Results. Community connectedness was central to motivation in this rural Guatemalan setting. Participants were from rural communities and conveyed a sense of connection to the people they were serving through shared culture and their own experiences of health needs. Satisfaction was derived through recognition from the community and a sense of valuing their work. Auxiliary nurses described challenges commonly faced in low-resource settings. Findings indicated they were actively confronting these challenges through their own initiative.

Conclusions. Strategies to support the performance of midlevel health workers should focus on mechanisms to make training accessible to rural residents, support problem-solving in practice, and emphasize building relationships with communities served.

Introduction : Strengthening health service delivery to the rural poor is an important means of redressing inequities. Meso-level managers can help enhance efficiency in the utilization of existing resources through the application of practical tools to analyze routinely collected data reflecting inputs and outputs. This study aimed to assess the efficiency and change in productivity of health posts over two years in a rural department of Guatemala.

Methods : Data envelopment analysis was used to measure health posts' technical efficiency and productivity change for 2008 and 2009. Input/output data were collected from the regional health office of Alta Verapaz for 34 health posts from the 19 districts comprising the health region.

Results : Technical efficiency varied widely across health posts, with mean scores of 0.78 (SD=0.24) and 0.75 (SD=0.21) in 2008 and 2009, respectively. Overall, productivity increased by 4%, though 47% of health posts experienced a decline in productivity. Results were combined on a bivariate plot to identify health posts at the high and low extremes of efficiency, which should be followed up to determine how and why their production processes are operating differently.

Conclusions : Assessing efficiency using the data that are available at the meso-level can serve as a first step in strengthening performance. Further work is required to support managers in the routine application of efficiency analysis and putting the results to use in guiding efforts to improve service delivery and increase utilization.

BACKGROUND: Mid-level health workers (MLHWs) form the front-line of service delivery in many low- and middle-income countries. Supervision is a critical institutional intervention linking their work to the health system, and it consists of activities intended to support health workers' motivation and enable them to perform. However its impact depends not only on the frequency of these activities but also how they are carried out and received. This study aims to deepen understanding of the mechanisms through which supervision activities support the performance of auxiliary nurses, a cadre of MLHWs, in rural Guatemala.

METHODS: A multiple case study was conducted to examine the operation of supervision of five health posts using a realist evaluation approach. A program theory was formulated describing local understanding of how supervision activities are intended to work. Data was collected through interviews and document review to test the theory. Analysis focused on comparison of activities, outcomes, mechanisms and the influence of context across cases, leading to revision of the program theory.

RESULTS: The supervisor's orientation was identified as the main mechanism contributing to variation observed in activities and their outcomes. Managerial control was the dominant orientation, reflecting the influence of standardized performance criteria and institutional culture. Humanized support was present in one case where the auxiliary nurse was motivated by the sense that the full scope of her work was valued. This orientation reflected the supervisor's integration of her professional identity as a nurse.

CONCLUSIONS: The nature of the support health workers received was shaped by supervisors' orientation, and in this study, nursing principles were central to humanized support. Efforts to strengthen the support that supervision provides to MLHWs should promote professional ethos as a means of developing shared performance goals and orient supervisors to a more holistic view of the health worker and their work.

Background: The performance of front-line health workers is critical for improving the health of vulnerable populations. Performance is a complex behavior generated through interactions between health workers, the health system and communities served. In Guatemala, where front-line nurses serve rural communities with great health needs, a concept mapping study was carried out with actors from different levels of a regional health system to develop an integrated view on how performance can be supported in this setting.

Methods: The concept mapping process began with four sessions engaging a total of 93 regional and district managers, and primary and secondary care health workers in generating ideas on actions needed to support nurses’ performance. Ideas were consolidated into 30 action items, which were sorted by 12 managers and rated by a total of 135 managers and health workers from different levels. Maps depicting domains of action and dynamics in sub-groups’ interests were generated using a sequence of multivariate statistical analyses and were interpreted by regional managers.

Results: The combined input of regional health system actors provided a multi-faceted view of actions needed to support performance, which were organized in six domains, including: Communication and coordination, Tools to orient work, Organizational climate of support, Motivation through recognition, Professional development and Skills development. The nature of relationships across hierarchical levels was identified as a crosscutting theme. Pattern matching and go-zone maps depicted dynamics in the interests of sub-groups of actors, indicating directions for action based on areas of consensus and difference.

Conclusions: This study indicates that rural nurses’ performance is interconnected with the performance of other actors in the regional health system who require support, including managers and community-level collaborators. Organizational climate is critical for making rural nurses feel supported, and the nature of relationships across levels shapes the way actions to support performance are implemented and received. The participatory nature of the conceptmapping process enables regional health system actors to collaborate in co-production of context-specific knowledge needed to guide efforts to strengthen performance.