No abstract

With the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Post-2015 Development Agenda upon us, it is increasingly important to address the worldwide deficit of human resources for health. Ironically, there is a unique subset of regionally trained healthcare providers that has existed for centuries, functioning often as an "invisible" workforce. These practitioners have been trained in an accelerated medical model and serve their communities in over 46 countries worldwide. For the purpose of this paper, "medical model" is defined as the evidence-based and scientific manner of training and practice that defines physicians globally.Inconsistent nomenclature, however, has resulted in these workers practicing as a virtually unidentified and disjointed cadre on the margins of health policy planning. We use the term Accelerated Medically Trained Clinician (AMTC) here as a categorical designation to encompass these professionals who have been referred to by various titles.We conducted an exploratory, systematic review for AMTCs in over 70 counties to asses if there is such a cadre, the name or title of their cadre, period of and curricula of training and existence of credentialing. This paper reports our findings and aims to serve as a springboard for future, in-depth studies on how we can better categorize and utilize these clinicians.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract