Human resources in healthcare and changing medical practice

¶ … complexities of modern medicine have resulted in higher demand for specialized services. This demand has caused the different disciplines involved in the delivery of health care to develop their own approach in the education of their personnel. For example, physicians are educated in their own institutions, as are nurses, medical technologists, and pharmacists. All of these programs are administrated individually and their curriculum is developed with little concern toward integration. This approach allows the individualized programs to educate their students fully and to allow these students to maximize their professional skills in their particular area. The advantage to this system is that patients are being provided with the professional assistance of an individual highly trained in their particular area but who is likely not qualified to train the whole person.

As health care has become more complex there has been a blurring of roles and responsibilities in regard to health care (Krystal Knight, 2010). This development requires that a more concentrated effort must be made to educate and train health care workers who understand and value the contributions of other professionals.

The current system should be adapted so that cross training between disciplines is a priority. This will allow health care professionals, whether physicians, nurses, pharmacists or therapists the opportunity to treat the entire individual with an eye toward coordination. Effective health care does not mean treating just the primary symptom or problem but treating such symptom with an eye on the effect on the patient.

2. The relative shortage of physicians in rural areas continues despite concentrated efforts by medical schools, government agencies, and local rural communities to attract qualified physicians to rural locations (Cullen, 1997). This shortage exists not only in terms of available numbers but also in terms of the number of physicians trained in the specialty areas. The causes of this combined problems are subject to some speculation but are certainly related to the payment structure currently in place that makes the practice of medicine in rural areas much less attractive financially, the increased number of women entering the field of medicine and their tendency to prefer urban practices, and the fact that specialists tend to favor locations that offer higher levels of specialized equipment and personnel.

The increased emphasis by medical schools and government agencies on primary care has served to emphasize the need for a balancing of the services available in rural areas but the change has been minimal over the past several years. A restructuring of the state and federal medical reimbursement programs to balance the economic effects of practicing in rural areas would also serve to alleviate the present imbalance. As to the specialization imbalance, several measures have been proposed including allowing treatment through electronic means such as televised evaluation and computerized testing. For the present, the problem will persist but constructive approaches are being devised to eliminate the imbalance.

3. The current emphasis on wellness as the overall goal of health care has placed considerable pressure on the health care educational system (Kreitzer, 2009). The wellness emphasis has caused the health care educational system to focus its attention on treating the entire patient and to provide the patient with the maximum amount of choice, quality, convenience, and personal care while maintaining affordability. This means that medical schools must begin to train more physicians interested in performing primary care services and to direct these physicians to areas of the country that have been traditionally poorly served. In order to develop an overall system where preventive medicine is practiced so that more serious medical difficulties can be avoided a solid network of primary care providers is necessary. Ideally, these providers would be in the form of licensed physicians but a system that utilizes a hybrid mixture of physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners would work as well in the interim. The education system must also begin adapting its curriculum so that its graduates and students are capable of assisting in the goal of maintaining overall wellness among the general public. Toward this end all health care professionals must begin integrating their services so that other disciplines concerns are both considered and addressed.