Exploring health workforce regulation practices and gaps in Ethiopia: a national cross-sectional study

Abstract Background Health workforce regulation plays key roles in ensuring the availability of competent health workers and improving performance of the health system. In 2010, Ethiopia established a national authority aiming to ensure competence and ethics of health professionals. Subsequently, subnational regulators were established and regulatory frameworks were developed. Although there were anecdotal reports of implementation gaps, there was lack of empirical evidence to corroborate the reports. We conducted a national study to explore health professional regulation practices and gaps focusing on registration, licensing, ethics, scope of practice, and continuing professional development. Methods We conducted a mixed methods cross-sectional survey using structured interview with a national representative sample of health professionals and key informant interviews with health regulators and managers. We used two stage stratified cluster sampling to select health professionals. The quantitative data were subjected to descriptive and multivariable logistic regression analysis. We conducted thematic analysis of the qualitative data. Results We interviewed 554 health professionals in the quantitative survey. And 31 key informants participated in the qualitative part. Nearly one third of the respondents (32.5%) were not registered. Many of them (72.8%) did not renew their licenses. About one fifth of them (19.7%) did nothing against ethical breaches encountered during their clinical practices. Significant of them ever practiced beyond their scope limits (22.0%); and didn’t engage in CPD in the past 1 year (40.8%). Majority of them (97.8%) never identified their own CPD needs. Health regulators and managers stressed that regulatory bodies had shortage of skilled staff, budget and infrastructure to enforce regulation. Regulatory frameworks were not fully implemented. Conclusions Health professionals were not regulated well due to limited capacity of regulators. This might have affected quality of patient care. To ensure effective implementation of health professional regulation, legislations should be translated into actions. Draft guidelines, directives and tools should be finalized and endorsed. Capacity of the regulators and health facilities needs to be built. Reinstituting health professionals’ council and regulation enforcement strategies require attention. Future studies are recommended for assessing effects and costs of weak regulation.