title: [Empowerment in the public health practice].
abstract: Public health personnel are the first-line workers of preventive care and medical services. In the face of rapid social and demographic changes, empowerment and on-job training have become important approaches to enhance the function of nurses. Health centers act like the "peripheral nerves" of the government healthcare system, as they must both reflect the needs of community residents and fully implement government mandated services. While widely distributed, health centers face manpower shortages and disorderly information collection and distribution systems. Empowerment and on-job training programs can enhance public heath staff knowledge in order to cope with heavy workloads and shift toward multi-dimensional development. This paper examines the experience of the New Taipei City Public Health Bureau in conducting health center empowerment programs from four perspectives, including personal cultivation and organizational cultivation. It was found that public health staff self-recognition of professional values can also be further strengthened through alliances within the community, and that establishing personal relationships with patients by "treating patients as relatives" was effective in realizing health center objectives. This paper also reminds agency supervisors that staff training is a critical management task. Health authorities should thus introduce in a timely manner organizational management, on-job training, service reengineering, and other related corporate philosophies; facilitate staff empowerment; consolidate core professional knowledge; and construct intellectual and social capital that meets health unit needs in order to enhance health center competitiveness and public health staff knowledge.
authors.affiliation: Public Health Bureau, New Taipei City, ROC. ac4244@ms.tpc.gov.tw
authors.forename: Shu-Li
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Chia
mesh_terms: D003153:Community Health Services; D006801:Humans; D011209:Power, Psychological; D015980:Public Health Practice; D013624:Taiwan