Health Care Staff Problem and Remedies
In health care, the essential role is to maintain or sometimes improve patients' health in the health care unit. This is attained by preventing diseases, diagnosing the patients' conditions, treatment, and recovery of the patient’s ailment through medication. The health care unit is founded by doctors, nurses, and other medical professional services. This requires the availability of this experienced personnel and facilities essential in providing medical services to the patients. Diagnosis is critical to the physical and examination of the patients before administering the medication required. The staffing of hospitals is one of the essential tools in the health care services where the patients need the attention of health care personnel for the diagnosis, treatment, and medication. The staff, that is, nurses and other medical staff, face many issues when in the line of duty. This problem includes a shortage of staff, long working hours for medical personnel, hazardous workplaces, and bullying and harassment in the working environment.
The shortage of staff in hospitals has proven to be the most pressing issue in the health care services where the nurses and doctors have been in low supply to the patients available. The shortage of medical personnel worldwide of the global problems in health care; the deficit has attributed to over seven million health workers worldwide (Aithal, & Aithal, 2017). The obligation concerning various healthcare departments' specialists includes cardio surgeon, cardiology nurse’s neural surgeon. The shortage in the health care staff has increased the risk in the continuity of microbial infection, the resistance of patients to these diseases, and the economic impact of conditions on a nation.
The shortage of health care workers has led to them working long hours to cope with the long list of patients in need of their attention. These workers' operation in long hours reduces their efficiency because of being exposed to stress for a long time, making their body and mind tired (Dixit, V., & Ghosh, S. (2019). The health care unit requires the doctors and nurses to respond faster to the patients' needs as failure may lead to the death or worsening of their situation, sometimes delayed response may cause the patient's conditions to be irreversible. The urgency in the health care needs all the staff and other medical staff in their right state of mind to provide these services to the patients. The opposite is correct for health care as they work for long hours in a stressful environment reducing their efficiency as they are exposed to a patient with a different mindset and stress.
The shortage and stress in the health care workers are not only the issue with the but also their exposure to the microbial bacteria and pathogens in the hospitals as they take care of the patients. Health care workers are the first line of defense when a nation is attacked by any biological disease exposed to these bacteria and conditions as they interact with the patients (Park, et al., 2019). This makes the health workers at high risk of contaminating the diseases even before the disease and the causative agent have been identified to determine the disease's treatment. This exposes the staff to various pathogens, making their working environment hazardous and harmful to all these workers' well-being in health care. Sometimes the nurses and doctors lack the required protective gear to protect them from these pathogens exposure to prevent them from getting infected.
Health care workers involved in the health issues suffer from bullying and discrimination concerning their diagnosis and the patient's and family members' beliefs. Health workers face stigmatization such as harassment and violence from inside their working environment and outside where they are discriminated against (Dye, et al. 2020). They are distinguished in terms of their long working hours, having distress psychological and physically in terms of fatigue associated with long working hours making them appear anti-social. The cases of violence and harassment among workers worldwide are reported to be directed to the health care workers. COVID 19 has accelerated the stigmatization of the health care workers where they were exposed to violence; these cases of stigmatization and violence increase the level of stress and psychological resulting in moral injuries.
Remedies
The shortage of healthcare staff has arisen as an issue in the health care unit where remedies in the sectors have been undertaken to ensure coverage of this shortage. The lack of nurses and other medical staff can be solved through adequate funding of the sector and nurses to motivate them to get into the industry, adequate training of the medical personnel and other medical staff (Abubakar, et al. 2018). To solve the medical staff shortage, countries such as Nigeria have medical tourism where medical staff is attracted to the government to promote their health sector. They develop machines and equipment essential for diagnosing various diseases such as cancer, chemotherapy to cancerous cells, kidney transplant, and chronic diseases. This reduces healthcare costs as they move to countries where they lack development, meeting their health care at low cost.
The medical staff's cases are exposed to pathogens, bacteria, and viruses equipped with the appropriate gears, especially for the COVID 19, where it’s a necessary protection for their health from the virus. Health care safety can be attained by providing relevant information about the diseases and pathogens, and viruses in place to enable them to take the right measures in protecting themselves (Ali, et al. 2020). The information is relevant where the details about a particular disease and its causative agent are known, making the taking of measures easier. The case of unknown viruses and bacterial illness requires that the medical staff have protective gears needed to protect them from the virus before acquiring the relevant knowledge about the virus. Being the leaders in the corona fight, the health care worker has to have protective gear to protect them from the virus and other pathogens.
The decree to increase the number of health care workers is one of the measures to reduce the cases of these workers working for long workers and reducing stigmatization and violence against health workers. The subject of violence is solved by developing policies and workers organizations fighting against the violence against female workers and health care workers (George, et al., 2020). This reduces the stress and trauma associated with this stigmatization and violence, which increases the productivity of these health workers as their environment is made more conducive. Education provided to the citizens on the effect of stigmatization and the need to treat everyone with respect and equality makes these cases reduce as people learn the impact of their actions.
The ethical implication on the remedies on the case involving medical staff and the issue affecting them will help determine how the team will work and respond to their needs. The need to respond to the patient's need fast can be solved by increasing the health care workers, which reduces their working hours, increasing their efficiency and effectiveness in their work. Stigmatization and violence eradication help minimize this worker's psychological stress, making their working environment more conducive. In most cases where workers' health has involved information on the diseases, and causative agent helps reduce infection to the workers and the protective gears.
References
Aithal, A., & Aithal, P. S. (2017). ABCD Analysis of Task Shifting–An optimum Alternative Solution to Professional Healthcare Personnel Shortage. International Journal of Health Sciences and Pharmacy (IJHSP), 1(2), 36-51.
Dixit, V., & Ghosh, S. (2019). Analyze Impact of Occupational Stress in Healthcare Professionals: A Critical Review. Invertis Journal of Management, 11(1), 30-37.
Park, S. Y., Lee, J. S., Son, J. S., Ko, J. H., Peck, K. R., Jung, Y., ... & Shi, H. (2019). Post-exposure prophylaxis for Middle East respiratory syndrome in healthcare workers. Journal of Hospital Infection, 101(1), 42-46.
Dye, T. D., Alcantara, L., Siddiqi, S., Barbosu, M., Sharma, S., Panko, T., & Pressman, E. (2020). Risk of COVID-19-related bullying, harassment and stigma among healthcare workers: an analytical cross-sectional global study. BMJ open, 10(12), e046620.
Abubakar, M., Basiru, S., Oluyemi, J., Abdulateef, R., Atolagbe, E., Adejoke, J., & Kadiri, K. (2018). Medical tourism in Nigeria: Challenges and remedies to health care system development. International Journal of Development and Management Review, 13(1).
Ali, S., Noreen, S., Farooq, I., Bugshan, A., & Vohra, F. (2020). Risk assessment of healthcare workers at the frontline against COVID-19. Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, 36(COVID19-S4), S99.
George, A. S., McConville, F. E., de Vries, S., Nigenda, G., Sarfraz, S., & McIsaac, M. (2020). Violence against female health workers is tip of iceberg of gender power imbalances. bmj, 371.
