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...descriptions obtained a sample of the known community and public health nutrition workforce in Australia and collation of position descriptions advertised in the February 2002 to August 2002 period.
Subjects: Community and public health nutritionists in the Australian health system.
Main outcome measures: Descriptive qualitative data about employers' expectations of the core functions, competencies and credentials of community and public health nutritionists, as expressed by position descriptions.
Results: From a total of 64 position descriptions obtained, 46 were included in the analysis. This sample consisted of 35 existing (occupied) positions and 11 new (advertised) positions. These were distributed across 29 entry-level and 17 advanced-level positions. The most consistent core function domains, as represented by duty statements, were community-based nutrition intervention management (planning, strategy development, implementation and evaluation), capacity building and nutrition-related research and evaluation. Entry-level positions were more likely to have direct-care or clinical dietetics functions and there was a stronger emphasis on coordination, capacity building and research in the advanced-level positions. Competency expectations, as represented by key selection criteria, focused on experience of intervention management, knowledge of public health nutrition issues and strategies, interpersonal communication skills and the ability to adopt a multidisciplinary working style. Almost all of the entry-level positions required mandatory dietetic qualifications.
Conclusions: As a proxy of employers' expectations, analysis of workforce position descriptions by duties (functions) and selection criteria (credentials and competencies), provide an alternative and complementary method to inform workforce development. Position description development may be an important organisational response to facilitate progressive workforce development and re-orientation.
Key words: employers' expectations, workforce development, core functions, competencies, public health nutrition, position descriptions
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Introduction
Dietitians have been identified as the dominant professional group, at least numerically, through the limited workforce information available that enumerates and profiles the designated public health nutrition workforce in Australia (1,2). This has implications for the development of the public health nutrition workforce because it appears that dietetic training programs provide the entry-level (and in most cases highest) qualifications upon which much of the public health nutrition workforce is built (3,4). There are no existing specific competency standards for public health nutrition in Australia to guide workforce development, although some have argued in the past that existing entry-level dietetic competency standards serve this function (5). Recent consultations however, support a view that specialst-level competencies for public health nutrition are required (2,3,6).
The methodologies used in developing dietetic competencies in Australia have focussed on functional analysis, critical incident debriefing and professional consultations (7). The perspectives of the employing organisation (hereafter referred to as the employer) appear not to have been specifically canvassed in the context of competency standards and workforce development, which raises questions about whether the competency standards provide the architecture for workforce development that matches employers' needs and expectations. Most of the recent Australian literature (6,8) relating to dietetic competencies reflects practitioner or academics' views rather than employer or organisational expectations.
There have been few published studies of employers' expectations of the nutrition and dietetic workforce's functions or competency requirements. One American study surveyed employers to rate graduate dietitians' competencies against entry-level graduate competency standards, but did not specifically investigate what employers expect in terms of roles or competencies (9).
Position descriptions are an instrument of human resource management used by employers to define the roles and responsibilities, credentials and competency requirements of a defined position within the workforce (10). As such they have potentially important roles in public health nutrition workforce development and practice. They define a position and represent a proxy of the organisational expectations of the position, and are the standard against which employers recruit and assess the performance of the majority of the workforce (11). They also provide an organisational mandate for a particular type of practice. The importance of this codified mandate has recently been demonstrated in a study of the public health nutrition workforce in Victoria where community-based dietitians reported being limited in their capacity to perform public health nutrition roles because position descriptions and organisational expectations did not provide support for services that were not clinical in nature (12). Position descriptions that are out of touch...
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