Answer

Developing Organizational Policies and Practices

Medical practitioners are tasked with protecting and saving people’s lives. In every case, all medical personnel work in unison and do everything possible in their knowledge through available resources to ensure that a patient’s life is safe. However, the technological world develops more sophisticated equipment in the medical field that requires time and resources to train and learn. Time and the constant demand to attend to patients make it hard for medical personnel to find time and up-skill. On the other hand, medical practitioners need technological skills for them to offer better medical services. Well-drafted organizational policies can influence the training for medical up-skilling. Ethical considerations and good medical practice changes, when implemented well, could balance the competing needs in the medical field. 

Impacts of Time and High Healthcare Demand on Healthcare Workforce Up-Skilling

Up-skilling requires a lot of time to train the available medical personnel, especially when it comes to new technological innovations. Since most medical personnel are already emersed in serving and caring for the high patient demands in hospitals, finding time between busy schedules becomes challenging. As a competing need, a request for adequate medical attention from the few professional medical personnel stands in the way of organizations providing sufficient training for the ever-improved technological medical equipment. Gharaibeh et al. (2020) highlight that organizations need to provide efficient, professional training to prepare for unforeseen medical emergencies and serve the ever-growing medical demand. Pandemics and disasters occur at any time; hence medical practitioners need to be ready for response. To work with a few medical personnel, an organization needs to ensure that training continues without compromising their primary responsibility to their patients.

The constant demand for medical attention is another competing need that makes it difficult for organizations to conduct medical personnel up-skilling training. As a competing need, medical practitioners need to attend t their patients to the best of their knowledge and medical training. However, with the constant need to up-skill to the new and advanced treatment options, health professionals experience workload as they try to perform both their primary duties and at the same time add knowledge to their experience. Chaghari et al. (2017) researched the in-service nurse training that, in their understanding belief, would minimize the in and outside movement when medical personnel go for training. However, in-service training also faces many challenges, especially when there is a shortage of medical professionals and high demand for healthcare services. 

The Role of Positive Attitude towards Training during the Medical Up-Skilling Process

Organizations that employ and encourage positive medical practices are likely respond and react to workforce healthcare up-skilling positively. Although up-skilling training would mean a heavy workload to the available medical personnel in some organizations, a positive attitude towards learning would be vital in retaining the few healthcare professionals available. Motamed-Jahromi et al. (2017) report that stress at work, especially in a nurse’s career, could be the source of job dissatisfaction; hence the quality of work and life lowers. With the shortage of nurses today, the available nurses already feel stressed due to the workload and long working hours during their shifts. Reducing the number of staff could cause more harm, hence demotivating the few medical practitioners from saving and protecting lives.

Medical practitioners, therefore, need a lot of motivation to develop a positive attitude towards their work and understand that their contribution is highly valued. Through the training, the nurses get to gain new knowledge and improve their skills, hence better treatment approaches. Motamed-Jahromi et al. (2017) add that training medical personnel to enhance their quality of services would reflect their feeling and attitude towards life and work. Encouragements through better salaries and allowances would motivate and change attitudes so that the up-skilling training yields positive results. Additionally, extending the subsidies to the training and encouraging the trained medical personnel to act as in-service trainers is another way to instilling a positive attitude towards training; hence all the other persons would gain interest in learning and upgrading their knowledge.

The Ethics of Positive Thinking and Positive Attitude

Positive thinking and positive attitudes are essential aspects and policy, especially in the medical profession. Andrade (2019) says that positive thinking entails accomplishing good things in pursuit of happiness. Therefore, human beings have to develop positive thoughts constantly. In this context, people believe that creating a positive attitude influences healthy living. However, there is no medical evidence supporting that a positive attitude, optimism, and happy thoughts are causes for good health. While encouraging medical personnel to develop a positive attitude towards up-skilling, there is no guarantee that all the participants would gain knowledge and apply it when the need arises. Additionally, the skills require resources in which many of the new technological medical equipment are too expensive for smaller organizations to afford. Therefore, a positive attitude from the healthcare providers toward up-skilling is not a direct ticket to the knowledge practice.

Additionally, despite lacking evidence of positive attitude doing much to encourage positive outcomes, positive attitude has its strengths in which it comes in helpful in some situations. Andrade (2019) gives an example of cancer disease treatment. For cancer patients, positive thinking and attitude are a much-needed resource as they get to discover a meaningful and precious asset to keep them going as they undergo treatment. However, there are some weaknesses of positive thinking in medical ethical considerations. In most cases, the patient’s autonomy is ignored. As an incurable disease, most cancer patients feel sad and depressed because of their condition and the situation they have put their families. Like cancer patients who are pressured to have joy in place of sadness, medical practitioners have no choice but to adhere to organizational policies to undergo training, especially those who believe in traditional treatment methods.

Peer-to-Peer Education as a Balance between Competing Needs and Up-Skilling Training

Despite facing challenges of competing needs and the need to ensure that all medical personnel in an organization undergo medical up-skilling, organizations have put forth policies that help balance all the variables, making everyone feel comfortable around the healthcare premises. When an organization encourages peer-to-peer learning, they eradicate the time challenge as medical personnel learns while in the line of duty through observation from a trained healthcare provider. Therefore, there is no need to find time to attend external training away from the workstation. While training and working, medical personnel attend to the patient’s demands, avoiding any workload to the other professionals who would remain behind while others are in training. However, there is a need to make all personnel understand that they are all gifted in different ways, and as such, everyone has something to teach and learn. With the education, up-skilling would no longer become a factor of concern as organizations would focus on upgrading the knowledge (Michaelis et al., 2019). Awareness is vital in avoiding making anyone feel inferior.

Conclusion

Up-skilling is an essential exercise in any medical institution. Although there are factors that hinder the activity from taking place, organizations, with the help of the medical personnel, try their best to ensure that they are up-to-date with the current trends in the medical field as far technology and treatment approaches are concerned. With a positive attitude and thinking, medical personnel could eradicate time factors, hence learning from each other as they attend to the health demand of their patients, therefore offering quality medical services.

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