Talk:Tag:amenity=health post

Current usage of this tag

The tag amenity=health_post has been mainly used in Nepal, with some use in Guinea (West Africa) and northern Ethiopia: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/UeI

Those in Guinea are usually named "Poste de santé de <place>". These usually have a nurse.

There is an online article about the Health Post system in Ethiopia: http://www.hhpronline.org/articles/2016/12/17/the-health-extension-program-of-ethiopia

"More than 38,000 government-salaried female Health Extension Workers (HEWs) are deployed in the country. 3 Two HEWs are assigned to one health post to serve a population ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 in a village “kebele”. HEWs provide key health services through fixed and outreach bases. They spend half of their working time conducting home visits and outreach activities and the remaining half at their health post providing basic curative, promotive and preventive services."

In Nepal, the amenity=health_post is used for "Health Post" and "Sub-Health Post" facilities. This article says:

"health assitant, axulliary health worker, assistant nurse midwife and maternal-child health worker are designated to work in PHC-C, HP [Health Post] or SHP [Sub-Health Post] in rural areas but to date there are insufficinet trained health workers available." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2723647/pdf/12199_2008_Article_BF02897302.pdf - older article

https://www.advancingpartners.org/resources/technical-briefs/nepal-community-based-health-system-model - more recent: "community-based health services provided by the three cadres of community-level service providers (CLSPs): female community health volunteers (FCHVs), auxiliary nurse midwives (ANWs) and auxiliary health workers (AHWs).2 Until recently, two other cadres—village health workers (VHWs) and maternal and child health workers (MCHWs)—operated in Nepal, but were upgraded to AHWs and ANMs. "

So these health posts are not staffed by nurses or doctors, they might have an "auxiliary nurse midwife" or "auxiliary health worker"

Comparing the 3 countries, all are health facilities at the village or neighborhood level which provide health care via workers who do not have as much formal training. Most of these workers might be called "community health workers" as a general term, though each country uses somewhat different terminology, and sometimes there is a registered nurse (e.g. in Guinea) --Jeisenbe (talk) 20:19, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

"sometimes there is a registered nurse" On use, I see there are quite a few instances of various keys in combination with amenity=health_post indicating number of different workers. While tags such as Proposed_features/Tag:staff_count:nurses may not be the best idea, tagging the pressence somehow should be helpful. -- Kovposch (talk) 11:44, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Does the credentials of the nurse really matter that much? We shouldn't have to factor in someone's bona fides when deciding what tag to use. There should really be a more general tag for this that doesn't rely on someones training. Outside of the places that this is used no one knows what a health post is anyway and the institution of OSM doesn't generally agree well with tags that are only usable in a few small (compared to the whole world. No dis to Nepal Et al.) regional areas. Plus, "health post" doesn't really impart any information as it is. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:08, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

BTW, from reading the articles it sounds like they are social facilities. I think that would probably be a better tag. Like maybe social_facility=outreach, and a special social_facility:for=whatever tag or something. If they are called "Health Posts" IRL then that's more of a naming thing. From personal experience doing a lot of POI cleanup in those areas that's my guess. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:12, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Possible depreciation

Maybe it is better use healthcare=nurse, healthcare=midwife or other more specific tags instead? In this case this tag may be marked as "deprecated". Something B (talk) 14:19, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Maybe it is also better to use healthcare=hospital and deprecate amenity=hospital, use healthcare=clinic and deprecate amenity=clinic? You can systematically use amenity=health_post by the health facility's category in the country's health system, but you need to go to the field to know if the responsible is a midwife or a nurse or a community health worker (and the responsible can change quite often between midwife/nuse at least in the case of Madagascar) Privatemajory (talk) 17:21, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree. amenity=hospital and amenity=clinic used mainly for historical reasons and may be deprecated in future. Something B (talk) 17:32, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't think tag this is viable for deprecation unless we start adopting healthcare=health_post because there is no direct equivalent among healthcare keys. For example, if the health post is permanently staffed with a nurse, a midwife, and a community health worker, should they be then tagged as healthcare=nurse;midwife;community_health_worker? GOwin (talk)

They may be tagged as healthcare=nurse – this is a more meaningful (and correct) than amenity=health_post that may be equivalent healthcare=nurse or healthcare=community_health_worker. Something B (talk) 00:08, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

And why should a nurse be chosen over a midwife, when both require specialist training? Of course, when more information is available, it shouldn't stop contributors from adding separate POIs for healthcare=doctor, healthcare=nurse, healthcare=midwife, healthcare=community_health_worker, as applicable. GOwin (talk)