Studies in planning health manpower: the Varna meeting.

Although the papers presented at the Seventh World Congress of Sociology session on Planning Medical Manpower are derived from the experience of researchers in ten nations, all of the writers subscribe to the concept of a health service system which is developed in part in several papers. This perspective assumes that a health service system includes all formal and informal activities centered on the provision of health services and of their utilization, by a population; in its connotation for health manpower this perspective includes all health personnel, their recruitment, training and behaviour. Further, a health service system is molded by prevailing social values, historical precedents; contained by disease, educational and fiscal restraints; and is inextricably linked with other systems. This approach provides a conceptual baseline for the testing of hypotheses generated by the various studies a framework within which it is possible to test whether certain behaviours and attitudes are universal in their implications or limited to specific settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]