Without the exemption of any sector, the pandemic has left the health sector more in need of reevaluation than any other sectors. What with it being a health pandemic.
The hospital and health system generally involves medical personnel, patients, pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers. Well, there is surely more than that but for now let us consider the above as we try to reevaluate our health system.
HEALTH PERSONNEL
Before the pandemic, if you were sick you would go to the hospital for treatment. Without any consideration of the health of the personnel working on you. I bet it ever crossed your mind.
But if you can remember the later days when you sat watching news seeing those risk takers try to protect themselves so that they can continue putting their lives at risk for your sake, tell me what came to your mind.
They deserve a lot much better. That’s what came to my mind.
All in all as we reevaluate the big picture of the health system, we realize that all we have to do mostly revolves around these health workers. Their health and safety guarantees us our health and safety.
HEALTH STRUCTURE
The other main part of reevaluating the health system is centered on the health structures. The need to evaluate whether these structures are sustainable in all circumstances paints the big picture of health systems.
Imagine patients of the COVID-19 virus having to be transferred to various regions because the health structures couldn’t sustain all of them.
Since there is a right to health for everyone, then it must be ensured that in case the need arises, everyone should have the right to be treated.
Whether we need more structures for our health sector or not seems to be the question in regards to this big picture, and surely the pandemic has proven to us that we do.
CULTURE OF HOSPITALS
There is a certain way of life wherever you’ll go. Be it in a country; ‘when in Rome do what the Romans do’ or in a society or even in an organization.
The same applies to the health systems in hospitals and clinics. Every environment has its own rules and this can gladly be shown by the attitudes the people portray towards certain aspects of life.
The health system can be evaluated through the behavior of medical personnel and how they relate with patients or co-workers.
The financial viability of the health workers is also another point that affects the culture of hospitals. Since health workers will happily attend to patients knowing that their skill is being compensated for in their good living.
After all, the performance of the medical personnel is responsible for the prosperity and reputation of the health centre or hospital.
WAYS TO REEVALUTATE THE HEALTH SYSTEM
After sometime, we all tend to get hungry and so do our skills. They don’t probably get hungry but they need to get renewed. It is believed that as humans we have to constantly keep on renewing our energies or skills so that we prevent them from getting out of touch or outdated.
One of the highly considerable ways to reevaluate our health systems is by organizing workshops to reskill and retrain the medical personnel.
The leaders should also encourage consistent and regular feedback from their teammates. This way, they are able to tell the strategies that are working and those that aren’t working. They are also able to survey individual performance as well as detect errors which would not have been noticed.
Hospitals and all other health centers should ensure that there is only the right number of staff working on a specific number of patients. The staff to patient ratio should be minimal to ensure that the patients are well taken care of.
The other option would probably be to employ gig workers in case of critical emergencies when more help is probably needed. And tracing the movement of these gig workers could actually help to obtain the best hardworking staff on the team with time.
The hospital and health system has been taken for granted and it’s now long overdue that we should attain the big picture of hospitals and the health system in general.
