According to the World Health Organization, by 2030, the world will lack 15 million health workers.
“We really need urgent action to reverse this,” said Bruce Steinberg, Head of International and HIMSS CEO, who moderated the closing remarks.Tomorrow to Yesterday: What’s Next in the Workforce? A glimpse into the future of healthcare” at HIMSS22 APAC last Wednesday.
“More importantly, we need to do more to train, recruit and retain the next generation of healthcare workers.”
During this session, Professor Oscar Lee, Associate Director and Orthopedic Surgeon at China Medical University Hospital (CMUH), and Gareth Sherlock, CEO of Cleveland Clinic London, also shared insights insight into retaining healthcare workers amid a growing infectious disease pandemic.
For Sherlock, the culture of the organization plays an important role in retaining talent. Initially, the Cleveland Clinic considered everyone in their organization, both medical and non-clinical staff, to be caregivers. “Because in a way, you are directly or indirectly responsible for the care of all the patients that we are taking care of,” he said.
According to Professor Lee, it is important to consider the perspective of the medical staff’s family.
According to him, organizations must use technologies to ensure labor safety during life-threatening pandemic conditions. “Not only [should it be] cuts for healthcare workers, but also for patients. Technology [must be] adjusted to help return medical workers. “
In the case of the Cleveland Clinic, there are two considerations for IT projects: one, it must make the lives of clinicians and other caregivers easier and more efficient, and two is that it should provide a better patient experience. “If it doesn’t do either of those things, what do you do it for?” Sherlock said.
Another strategy for employee retention is to provide continuing education. Professor Lee shared that CMUH has partnered with Taiwan AI School to provide evening courses to equip university faculty and hospital staff with the basic concepts and knowledge of AI.
Attracting global talent
Sherlock claims that one thing that attracts medical talent to the Cleveland Clinic is its universal healthcare model.
He noted how frustrating it is for candidates that many hospitals, especially those within the health system, operate so independently and their systems and processes are often distinct from other hospitals. other institutes in the same system.
“People are drawn to Cleveland Clinic London [because] We use the same systems and the same processes as [those] at the main campus or in Abu Dhabi. And some of the technology we are offering is very very advanced,” explains Sherlock.
Meanwhile, Professor Lee said what sets them apart from other university hospitals in the region is that their institution is a “hub for innovation.” At CMUH, he explains, medical residents are not only given the opportunity to perform their professional duties, but are also given the opportunity to work on health technology projects.
Get everyone involved in digital transformation
In the many digital transformation projects in the UK, Middle East and Australia that Sherlock has been involved in, all have been clinically led. “If they’re not clinically leading, in my experience, they’re not going to be successful,” he claims.
Their clinicians, for example, developed the stroke program workflow at their hospital in Abu Dhabi, making the facility the stroke center in the city. While the IT team built the system underneath the program, it was the clinical team that launched it and trained everyone on it, Sherlock said.
However, communication between IT and care teams can be an obstacle to efforts in digital health transformation.
To solve this problem, Professor Lee persuaded the university leadership to teach and orient medical students with technology.
“They don’t have to be Python experts; the bottom line is they have to be able to understand what people from IT can do for them and help them,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sherlock refers to the Informatics department as a key to bringing IT and clinical teams together in digital transformation efforts.
He also advises that in any IT project, all employees from all levels of the organization must be involved from the very beginning to the completion of the project.
“They need to be part of the process so that in the end, [they are the] the biggest supporters, they are the people [who are] sell programs. “
