Harnessing Multiple Mental Models and Creating Opportunities for learning about Human Resource Issues among District Health officers

This paper describes and evaluates the experience of using soft systems methodology (SSM), a problem structuring method of soft operations research (OR), to create learning opportunities about “people issues” among District Health Officers working in the government health system. A one-day workshop on human resource issues was facilitated using SSM. The workshop was part of a ten-day training program, titled “National Health Programmes and Management Issues in Health Organisations”, for District Health Officers from two states of India, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. SSM was preferred over a simple discussion or a question answer session because it allowed participants to engage in self-learning and coordinate multiple perceptions of a given situation. Rich picture building one of the tools of SSM was used for facilitating the workshop. The use of SSM helped generate a creative learning situation and provided both the participants and the trainers an opportunity to understand human resource issues faced by those working in the government health department.