Exchange your Business Research Paper in the Individual Forum with a peer as assigned by the instructor. Refer to the "Guidelines for Peer Review" to complete this assignment. If you need additional a

1

Running Head: BUSINESS PROPOSAL

Grand Canyon University: HLT 364 Professor Rothrock

Lauryn Tyzbir

6/16/2020

Ever since the creation of medicine during the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, the medical field has always been growing and evolving with new trends and technologies. With growing population in the United States more and more people seek medical care to stay healthy or receive treatment. However, with all of the growth in the population there creates a need for more medical professionals to care for them. This new growth of society then poses a problem for medical facilities not being able to accommodate the masses. So how does the shortage of healthcare professionals affect the stakeholders, quality of care, and how should this situation be addressed? Lack of medical workers poses bigger problems and many actually realize. This paper will discuss how the shortage of medical professionals in the industry creates a barrier and how to effectively address the issue to prevent the barrier from happening in the future.

Shortage of Healthcare Professionals

Shortages of medical professionals have a substantial and damaging impact on their local communities. “The shortage of healthcare professionals poses a major hurdle. The healthcare industry is posed to grow 2.5 times faster than any other industry annually. Healthcare professionals expect to be paid more to repay their student loans. So, hospital administrators must find a way to acquire quality employees from a small pool for an ever-growing pool of job openings and manage to pay them more. Acquiring these employees is more complicated than just putting out an ad. Recruiting includes building relationships with local and national schools that educate new healthcare employees and wooing them with an attractive place to work, one with benefits, lucrative pay and a feeling of passion for working at their particular facility” (Healthcare Administration, 2020). The shortage is especially problematic in more rural areas due to lack of appeal and feeling unappreciated. Less desirable locations also have the issue of staff being under trained which makes them more apt to leave for another facility where regular training is being practiced. When staff do not feel like their efforts are noticed they tend to be unhappy which results in low morale, work place tension, and even higher turnover rates. When people hear about these issues it makes that working environment seem less desirable to future medical professionals.

Addressing the Problem

In order to address the issue of lack of health care staff it is essential to first know the issue and know the legislation for adopting new programs. An external regulation that must be considered to ensure compliance would be the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), while they are considered voluntary they help to regulate and monitor whether a facility has serious injuries or any type of deaths in a medical facility. With a shortage of medical professionals there is a higher risk of sentinel events happening in medical facilities, hence why JCAHO is an important part of keeping everything in check. The American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) has developed a plan to address the issue of staff shortages. By reinforcing the patient/clinician/executive partnership it can help with retaining medical professionals. ACHE ensures that people are treated with respect, they encourage continued quality improvement, create professional development programs, managing workflow to prevent physician burnout and meet patient needs, making sure everyone meets qualifications, be mindful of how temporary staff affects finances, creating and conducting mandatory workplace and exit surveys, work with employees to address issues in the workplace, hire more diverse staff that is culturally competent, analyze facilities and departments that have a high turnover rate, review working conditions, and diverting patients to other facilities so ensure all patients receive top quality care. “Healthcare executives may find it beneficial to join forces with others in their service areas to address the problem of staff shortages. Collaboration to recruit qualified staff will prove to be a more effective long-term strategy than competition for the same resources. ACHE encourages healthcare executives to collaborate on the development of creative, sustainable strategies that will benefit their respective organizations as well as help ensure that high-quality, affordable healthcare remains available in their communities” (ACHE, 2017).

Research and proposed strategies

Conducting confidential interviews and surveys with both health care workers and the general public about how the shortage of medical professionals causes an increase of errors can help to collect statistics on the matter. By conducting different types of surveys with those in the medical field and those who receive care it will give a good indicator of the current issues and what needs to be fixed in order to rectify the situation. After conducting interviews, the results showed that much of the staff feel that the workloads were more intense and many of the current working staff talked about how they were planning to leave their position in search of a different facility. “The main themes emerging were: too few staff, too many patients; lack of clinical officers/doctors; inadequate obstetric skills; undermining performance and professionalism; and physical and psychological consequences for staff. Underlying factors were inflexible scheduling and staff allocations that made it impossible to deliver quality care” (Bradley, 2015). The use of quantitative and qualitative studies of clinical sites can be beneficial in order to see errors and see where there is room for improvement. This information can help to formulate proposed a plan to entice more medical professionals into the industry. First the who, why, what, when, where, and how to ensure that the plan will effectively be communicated. Starting small is ideal when creating a strategy to make sure that all of the information if fully formed prior to marketing it. Creating a communication team is a great way to formulate plan of action. Once the plan is created then the facility as a whole need to meet, there needs to be advertisements on social media, and newsletters advertising jobs for medical professionals. With this plan put in place it can entice more prospective staff and make students interested in working in the medical field. Those who are already in the industry also need to be focused on because it will keep staff excited about their jobs. Continued education (CE) is a great way to motivate staff, keep them on their toes, give them room for growth, and show that they are apricated for all that they do. These education programs help to ensure that those working in the facility or organization are following protocols and that they will be more inclined to stay working in the field for the long run.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the shortage of medical professionals has a big impact on the medical field, so it is important to find solutions to rectify the situation. With all of the changes that happen in the medical industry it is important to have trained and educated health care workers. This is why attracting more medical professionals into the field is needed to prevent facilities from being short staffed, over worked, more errors with treatment and medication, poor patient outcomes, and long wait times. In order to find an optimal solution to this dilemma it is imperative to know the repercussions of not addressing and fixing the issue of a shortage of medically trained staff. By conducting anonymous surveys for currently employed staff and the patients a plan can be formed and once that is known then the barrier can be slowly erased and prevented in the future. Fixing the shortage of medical professionals and increasing continued education programs will help create longevity in the medical field and prevent this barrier from happening in the future.

References

American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE). (2017). Ethical Issues Related to Staff Shortages. American College of Healthcare Executives. https://www.ache.org/about-ache/our-story/our-commitments/ethics/ache-code-of-ethics/ethical-issues-related-to-staff-shortages.

Bradley, S., Kamwendo, F., Chipeta, E., Chimwaza, W., de Pinho, H., & McAuliffe, E. (2015, March 21). Too few staff, too many patients: a qualitative study of the impact on obstetric care providers and on quality of care in Malawi. BMC pregnancy and childbirth. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4377843/.

Healthcare Administration Degree Programs. (2020). What Are The Top 3 Challenges Facing Hospital Administrators? Healthcare Administration Degree Programs. https://www.healthcare-administration-degree.net/faq/what-are-the-top-3-challenges-facing-hospital-administrators/.

Schiff L (Ed.). (2003). RN news watch: professional update. Nurse shortages cause medical

errors, say the public & docs. RN, 66(2), 16.