Technical Officer Quality Management

The mission of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme (The Programme) is to build the capacities of Member States to safely manage health emergency risks and, when national capacities are overwhelmed, to lead and coordinate the international response to mitigate, contain, provide effective relief and recovery to affected populations. The Programme supports countries and coordinates international action, to prevent, prepare for, detect, timely respond to, and recover from outbreaks and other public health emergencies. The objectives of the Country Readiness Strengthening Department is to achieve effective operational readiness and response for the most imminent and serious health emergencies. The department supports Member States to develop, establish and finance comprehensive readiness plans for health security that are facilitated by strategic partnerships across all relevant sectors. Operational readiness is critical for countries, communities and organizations to have the capability to be able to respond immediately and appropriately to health emergencies from any hazard when required. Strengthening operational readiness is based on a continuous process of assessing current risk based on the identification of hazards with the highest likelihood and severity against the level of existing capacities and vulnerabilities. This is a continuous process followed by the assessment of readiness capabilities and the acceleration of targeted actions at trigger for an imminent threat to ensure an efficient emergency response. Readiness is a status of specific capabilities to quickly and appropriately respond when required to mitigate the impact of specific risk(s) and is built upon preparedness. The Health Care Readiness (HCR) Unit works on end-to-end processes covering all emergency management cycles, to enhance preparedness, operational readiness and response measures. This includes the development of technical infection prevention control and clinical care standards, norms, standards, tools and guidelines; also covers the processes for health emergency workforce, surge capacities and quality assurance systems and procedures. The unit’s work is at the core of the safe and scalable care subsystem to build core capacities of Member States to ensure they have systems in place ensuring the right working conditions and standards for health workforce as well as capacity to deploy surge workforce when needs arise. The unit works with several networks at international, regional and country level including academia to bring partners together for norm setting, advancing research and innovation, capacity strengthening and rapid deployment of health care experts for surge capacity. Agility and operational readiness are critical to provide both immediate, short-term safe and quality care to reduce the loss of life and prevent long-term disability in different public health emergency scenarios.

Duties:

Within the framework of the delegated authority, the incumbent is assigned all or part of the following duties which are performed according to the needs and agenda:

• Lead the development of quality management (planning, control and improvement) and patient safety agenda for the EMT Initiative and other response capacities, in support of the EMT Team Lead (Network Leader), including but not limited to:
• Coordinate the setup and support implementation of a validation/accreditation mechanism for national rapid response capacities, such as EMTs and RRTs.
• Provide ongoing technical advice and support to Member States, WHO Regional and Country Offices in adopting and adapting minimum technical standards and coordination mechanisms for building quality-assured rapid response capacities according to their needs
• Provide ongoing support to monitoring and evaluation of critical areas of EMT work, including the development of key performance indicators.
• Take part in or lead capacity strengthening and quality improvement missions for national and international RRTs.
• Identify opportunities, collaborate, and propose strategies to advance the patient safety agenda for rapid response capacities at global, regional, and national levels, including the adaptation of existing interventions to the specific context of rapid response capacities, such as EMTs and RRTs Identify and contribute to after-action reviews and other operational research opportunities.
• Support activities to build the required capacities with the EMT Network and RRT Programs, WHO Regional and Country office for implementation of quality improvement activities (e.g: running tests of change to implement lessons learned derived from after-action reviews).
• Provide ongoing advice and technical support to the network Leader, Regional and Country Offices on matters related to planning, control, and improvement of quality and patient safety for RRC.
• Work closely with the EMT Network Leader, Regional and Country Offices to support the implementation of the programmatic priorities of the EMT Strategy.
• Provide expert advice and support to the global EMT mentorship and classification process focusing on the operational aspects and participate in classification and reclassification visits as required.
• Develop and continuously review minimum technical standards and best practices, ensuring alignment between the different rapid response capacities, such as EMTs and RRTs and adaptability to the national context.
• 5Provide substantive and technical oversight to consultants and assigned Technical Working Groups, including new projects intending to complement available resources for rapid response capacities (e.g. Toolkit);
• Provide, when required, operational support to the EMT Secretariat in the event of an activation and/or deployment, including but not limited to providing technical support to country, regional and headquarters response functions, preparedness activities and emergency response.
• Perform other related responsibilities as assigned, including replacing and backstopping for others as required.

Required Qualifications:

Education

Essential:

• Advanced degree (masters or equivalent) in public health or management from an accredited or recognized institute.

Experience:

Essential:

• At least seven years of experience working in quality management activities for healthcare at national and international levels.
• Previous experience in working with international organizations.

Skills:

• Demonstrated capacity to multitask and produce results under pressure within short deadlines.
• Strong organizational and analytical skills combined with project management abilities particularly in difficult situations and diverse contexts.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to write clearly and concisely.
• Mentoring, collaboration, and flexibility. Critical thinking.

Language Skills:

Essential:

• Expert knowledge of English.

Source:  https://careers.who.int/careersection/ex/jobdetail.ftl?job=2402360