Human Resources: Health Care Personnel and the Changing Practice of Medicine

Professional Development Assignments: (60 points)
The various kinds of health professionals are educated in separate schools but with considerable overlap in curricula and training requirements. They are, however, expected to integrate their training and work together after graduation. Identify the advantages and disadvantages of this approach to professional education in terms of costs, educational efficiency, and patient care quality.
An oversupply of physicians in many urban regions contrasts with continuing problems of access in rural and inner-city areas. Why does the mal-distribution of physicians persist in spite of the number of physicians who graduated?
The health care delivery system now places increased emphasis on maintaining wellness and on promoting disease avoidance through healthy behaviors and lifestyles. What challenges does this new orientation pose for our existing system of medical education and training?
Each response should be 500-1000 words
APA formatting required
Although each response is a separate essay of 500-1000 words, all responses should be combined into a single document for submission

 

SOLUTION

Human Resources: Health Care Personnel and the Changing Practice of Medicine

Response 1

The curricula of every medical school have similar course content that the trainees have to cover before they graduate and get certified as competent licensed medical practitioners. The setting of the schooling institution and the training tactics might differ to some extent, but the informational content covered is absolutely similar.

The uniformity and overlapping of the curricula are exercised for the purpose of making the trainees have reduced or no differences when it comes to administering of care (Dziegielewski, 2013).

Thus, this is why one would find that the medical staff of a given health facility might have schooled in different schools or even countries, but they work in collaboration and cooperatively. Below is an illustration of how the integration of training skills and knowledge of professionals from different schools is of advantage and disadvantage in the health care.

Advantages

Costs

Confining the various health professionals who come from different medical schools in one area for the purpose of integrating their training and knowledge, this strategy ensures that these individuals get the opportunity learn from each other in relation to the varying skills gained in the school setting. Therefore, one would be able to experiment on and sharpen the skills and knowledge gained at the college level at a reduced cost.

The costs incurred by the various health institutions that provide practical training of the health professionals would be reduced extensively since they do not have to guide them on how to integrate the training separately.

In some cases, the integration process would only require those health professionals from a particular medical school to be enrolled in the same institution and this makes the professional education costly since every professional from a different school would have to learn on how to integrate the college work and training independently or separately.

Hence, one would say that the togetherness or single confinement of health professionals during the college training work integration processes makes the professional education cheaper or rather less costly.

Educational Efficiency

Educational efficiency refers to the status of medical school institutions and health facilities of providing quality standardized professional education to its trainees under minimal or no drawbacks.

Relating this definition to the strategy proposed in this topic, one would say that putting together all the health professionals in one place and same settings during the integration of their college training and knowledge would make the professional education acquire efficiency since the trainees would gain the necessary skills for health care provision all at one place.

The health institutions that help these health professionals in the integration process would in turn achieve efficiency in their practice of professional education provision since the setting allows them to reach the different walks of health practitioners.

Patient Care Quality

Integrating the college work and training of health professionals from different medical schools in a combined setting would help the individual professionals to share and exchange ideas regarding health care, and thus gaining additional knowledge and skill on how to improve the care provided to the diversified patient population.

Thus, conducting the integration process from this particular perspective would enable the professional education system to gain a new standard on quality care since the setting allows these health professionals to be acquainted with the necessary procedure required to provide quality care for the patients.

Disadvantages

The strategy on practicing the integration process in a confined single environment for all the health professionals from different medical schooling institutions would require the health institutions that provide professional education to ensure every aspect of the various overlapping curricula is included in the training procedures.

Hence, this would cause increased costs in the provision of the integration processes since every professional desire to see their former curricula reflected in the procedures. Integrating the training and work of health professionals would make the individual professionals loose track of what they learned in their respective colleges due to hybridization, and thus hindering the professional education efficiency since some of the participants might deviate from the career due to personalized feeling of misguidance.

On the other hand, combined integration of the college training and skills of different-schooled health professionals would lead to competition amongst them and thus lowering the quality of health care practice learned in this professional education level.

Response 2

The mal-distribution of physicians refers to the unequal allocation and assignment of health professional existing between urban and rural area health facilities. In spite of the increased number of graduates in health profession, the distribution still persists to be mal and this can be attributed to several factors that hinder the supply of enough physicians in the remote areas of any nation.

Low Income

An individual would always be attracted to work in an area that has plenty of opportunities to make additional income part from the government salary. The situation presented in rural areas is worse since the patient population there is low and having businesses such as pharmacies and chemists would not pull any substantial additional income.

Hence, a large number of the fresh graduates in health profession prefer working in urban areas where the patient population is ever increasing and the opportunities are unlimited. Thus, the number of physician working in the rural areas would be often reduced compared to those in urban centers.

Self-Employment of Majority of the Health Practitioners

As discussed in the above paragraph, income remains to be the only enticement that pulls most of the health practitioners to work for a given health facility. Quite a large number of the already working and fresh graduates in health care profession have opted to work in private owned health centers for they often paid better than the government health care contracts.

Therefore, the expected increased number of graduates in health profession would be absorbed into the private health care practices instead of being distributed to the rural areas that have insufficient medical personnel. Thus, the mal-distribution of physicians in inner parts of the cities and rural areas will remain a challenge in equitable distribution of resources in health care since the expected new workforce is diverted to private health care practices (Lemiere, 2011).

Sparsely Distributed Patient Population in Rural Areas and Loyalty to Indigenous Treatment Plans

In rural areas, the patient population there is small and this in turn requires a reduced number of medical practitioners to serve them. This notion has always posed as the convincing factor to the different governments when it comes to distribution of physicians. The federal government, through the respective nursing boards, it has regularly distributed a smaller number of medical practitioners to the remote areas simply because these areas have limited number of patient populations to serve.

The fact the hospital sin these rural areas seem to have no congestion in terms of patient numbers, this drives the government to assign a smaller number of health personnel to help them. Another reason as to why the mal-distribution of physicians keeps on persisting is due to the culture and tradition that exists among the people living in these parts of a nation.

They often exhibit behaviors of loyalty to indigenous treatment plans. They believe the herbal medicine is the answer to their health issues. Hence, this is why the patient turn out in hospitals located in those areas is very low. Hence, this in turn promotes the mal-distribution of physicians since these populations are not in urgent need of health professionals.

Response 3

The new orientation suggested in this particular question asserts that modern health care delivery systems should lay emphasis on promotion for disease avoidance and maintaining wellness through exercising healthy lifestyles and behaviors. The main idea here is to promote preventive medicine and maintain of positive health conditions (Tones & Tilford, 2001).

However, this new practice orientation would be challenged by a number of factors that surface within the existing medical training and education. These include;

Focus on Curative Medicine

In most of the medical schools, the tutors who guide the health professionals often focus on curative medicine and not preventive. The health professionals are only taught on how to administer cure to the different illnesses presented by the patients in a health care setting. The logic presented here is that nurses or doctors rarely serve patients who have visited them for consultation purposes on how to live a healthy life.

Majority of the patients are those individuals who are sick and need to be cured. Therefore, the existing medical training and education presents a barrier in the way of implementing the aforementioned preventive medicine since the health practitioners who are supposed to participate in the exercise are not skilled on such practice, but rather competent on curative medicine.

Deviation from Primary Role of Health Professionals to become Health Advocators

The promotion of the new orientation in health care delivery systems would face consistent challenges in that health practitioners are trained to administer health care to patients but not work as advocators. The existing medical training and education system does not teach these health professionals on how to act as leaders change.

The focus they have is on serving the patient population in relation to the health needs presented before them. The work of advocating for preventive medication would be another new branch in medical studies that would require retraining of these practitioners. Hence the new orientation would not be possible to implement in the presence of the existing medical training and education systems since it does not have this kind of practice in its content.

Misinforming Curricula

The curriculum used in training and educating the medical experts does not inclusive of preventive medicine besides polio and measles vaccination, and these two diseases are not even vaccinated regularly since individuals are used to seeking medical help when an illness has already occurred. The course content only covers curative medicine and this is what the practitioners are good at.

Inducing this new orientation to the existing medical training and education system would confuse the practitioners since they have always focused on curative medicine for the whole of their career life. Hence, the condition of having a curriculum that does not include preventive medicine practice makes it hard for this new orientation to be implemented.

 

References

Dziegielewski, S. (2013). The Changing Face of Health Care Social Work: Opportunities and Challenges for Professional Practice. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company, LLC.

Lemiere, C. (2011). Reducing geographical imbalances of the distribution of health workers in Sub-Saharan Africa: a labor market angle on what works, what does not, and why. Washington, D.C: World Bank.

Tones, K. & Tilford, S. (2001). Health promotion: effectiveness, efficiency and equity. Cheltenham, UK: Nelson Thornes.

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