Answer

Exploring the Case of Healthcare Workforce Up-Skilling

                Upskilling the healthcare workforce is considered as a pertinent national healthcare concern affecting US healthcare institutions. Healthcare organizations available across the US experience several national healthcare stressors and issues that affect their operability. All of the pertinent concerns are associated with a level or urgency in that some should be addressed faster than others. Upskilling the care professionals is one of the most rampant stressors affecting the system in the US that should be addressed. Ross (2019) defined up-skilling as a process entailing retraining the staff within the care setting to ensure that they can continually dispatch their services within the nursing practice with ease. This paper will analyze the case of health care workforce up-skilling as a pertinent issue as experience in an organization. To achieve this, the issue of workforce up-skilling will be described and its impact on the firm. A summary of two articles of the issue will also be presented with an evaluation of how other firms address it. Moreover, strategies for addressing workforce up-skilling will also be presented.

The Issue of Up-Skilling and Impact on the Quadruple Aim

                Technological development is one of the recent adjustments being experienced in the world today. With the advancement in technology, care professionals are required to advance their skills so that that they can effectively manipulate technology to meet their desirable operational outcomes. Moreover, the advancement in technology has made it necessary for healthcare workers to have an upgraded skillset. However, up-skilling has remained a continuous challenge experienced by healthcare workers. According to the study completed by PwC Health Research Institute in 2019, up-skilling was regarded as one of the six fundamental concerns experienced within the healthcare field (Ross, 2019). Evidently, the advancement in technology such as the development of artificial intelligence, exposes the professionals to a risk of redundancy in the events whereby their skills are not upgraded.

                The impact of up-skilling of care professionals to my health care organization is significant. Notably, the use of technology in healthcare organization has remained a significant factor. In my care organization, technology is used in various departments. For instance, it is mandatory for technology to be used in therapeutics, diagnostics and in the administration of nursing care. As a result, the nurses in the organization have found themselves short of the required skills to manipulate the primary technological resources to ensure delivery of effective and efficient care. Furthermore, when relying only on the use of traditional techniques at Quadruple Aim, the organization incurs huge costs approximated at $133.60 per case in comparison to $47.35 per case. Therefore, if the healthcare professional’s skills continue to remain poor, the organization will increasingly incur huge costs, which can further affect its performance in the sector. Upskilling has also proven to be an effective factor amidst the Coronavirus pandemic as the healthcare professionals are provided with requisite knowledge about how to effectively deal with the pandemic as they maintain their safety (Wise et al., 2020).

To address this concern, the organization has allocated its efforts towards investing significant resources on upgrading the nurses’ skills to ensure their retention (Liddy & Keely, 2018). The aim is to ensure that the care professionals have the capacity to cope with the emerging technological changes. This has proven to be a resource intensive move for the business. For instance, in my organization, the policy makers were impacted with the obligation of allocating funds focused on training the healthcare staff members, including the nurses, on how to make use of sophisticated technology such as the Electronic Health Records (EHR). Currently, up-skilling is taking place within the field of healthcare since it is a standard requirement for care professionals to desirably make use of the electronic health records system.

Reviewed Articles

Michaelis, Skypala, Gardner, Sheikh, Fox and Holloway (2019) suggest that up skilling of healthcare professionals is a necessary requirement to ensure that the rising prevalence rate and effect of allergic diseases across the globe is effectively addressed. Notably, the associated costs, both from the health and economic perspective, are significant. The direct care costs and indirect costs affect the general care system causing a strain of resources. Michaelis et al. (2019) indicate that up-skilling the healthcare workers available at all levels ensures that they are provided with the right skills and knowledge such that they can also become effective future trainers. Through up-skilling, a general reduction in the emergency use of the clinical service is achieved (Michaelis et al., 2019).

On their part, Watkins, Stein-Parbury, Denney-Wilson, Ward and Rosenbaum (2020) provide that poor metabolic health has continued to be a factor of concern. Although mental health nurses are exposed to an environment whereby they can aid in addressing the gap through the use of lifestyle intervention, it is evident that most lack the required confidence or skills in implementing the strategies. In the work of Watkins et al. (2020), up-skilling through education can be effective in the improvement of confidence, attitude, skill and knowledge about mental health nursing when it comes to the provision mental health care to decrease the associated barriers in care delivery. Therefore, it is evident that in other organizations such as mental health institutions and those dealing with allergic conditions, education is considered as a requisite strategy of up-skilling.

Strategies used for Addressing Up-skilling

Different strategies can be used to address up-skilling as a stressor. For instance, proper resources allocation towards staff training is an effective considered of addressing the issue. When enough resources are allocated towards training the staff members, most workers will be provided with a chance of advancing their skills to ensure that they can effectively meet the organizational requirements such as when dealing with mental health cases (Watkins et al., 2020).

Moreover, effective communication, particularly when it comes to setting forth the care or practice goals for the professionals, is essential in addressing up-skilling concerns. When there is clarity about what goals nurses are required to meet when administering care, most will see the need of up-skilling to guarantee that they have what is required to meet the goals. When more care professionals understand this requirement, it is highly likely that up-skilling will no longer be a factor of concern in the care field since most will focus on investing on upgrading their knowledge to meet the stated goals (Michaelis et al., 2019).

Implementing the strategies will have a positive and negative impact to my organization. For instance, the implementation will ensure that the professionals have an advanced skill and knowledge needed to meet the prevailing trends within the care environment. In addition, this will benefit the business, as the staff will have the right skills and knowledge to use to the new technology introduced in the healthcare environment. However, implementing the strategy suggests that the firm will also experience a negative impact. For instance, the management will be required to invest extra funding and resources towards the strategy implementation to achieve the anticipated results. Carnevale, Smith and Gulish (2018) argued that upskilling would create a competitive environment for the workforce to ensure that they only deliver quality output as they strive to fill competitive wage positions.

Conclusion

                Conclusively, workforce up-skilling is one of the issues in healthcare, as the skills of most workers are not upgraded. As a result, manipulating new technology required to deliver effective care has remained a challenge. In addition, dealing with mental health issue or allergic diseases has proven to be challenging to the nurses who lack the skills and knowledge of care administration. Therefore, the stressor can be addressed through investing more funds in educating the care professionals and having clearer goals about what is expected of the staff while in the care environment will be effective in addressing this challenge.