The health workforce is the most important aspect of all government health systems across the world. The health workers have the mandate to utilize the range of skills acquired and their competence to ensure an effective, safe and quality healthcare to the nation at large. One of the major goals of health information and data is to contribute to the attaining of a universal coverage of quality healthcare services through improved access and utilization of health information. According to World Health Organization (WHO), the western Pacific countries are very diverse in the level of utilization of their well-developed workforce plan in terms of data collection and information.
The aim of this report is to give an analytic comparison of a national health workforce plans of Australia and one of the West Pacific Countries, Singapore. (Bhargava, 2018, pp.3-4) acknowledges that Singapore has experienced a drastic improvement in its health sector as the workforce effective planning has been acknowledged to be the most improved in its health sector and in controlling the cost of care across the country. Moreover, the factors that have led to their improvement are majorly related to the way it is governed and how the government of Singapore approaches to health issues. This makes it suitable for comparison to Australia whose framework has been designed against the background of challenges it has been reported to experience particularly in the national health workforce planning (Gardner et al., 2017).
According to (Nancarrow et al., 2017, pp.327-335), an environmental scan is a strategic assessment tool that an organisation puts in place to forecast the performance of its workforce in relation to the current and future sustainability of the organisation. An environmental scan is said to be an essential step in workforce planning steps which should be observed by any system that needs to lay out a suitable framework for its operation. This can be well understood through the following figure;
From the figure, it can be seen that environmental scan forms the basis of data collection for an organisation in the effort of forming an effective workforce planning. In this step, a SWOT analysis is also made which is mainly the identification of the organisation’s Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (Norwood et al., 2017, p.204).
Preparation of an environmental scan involves the collection of pieces of external and internal data that could assist the organisation to focus appropriately on their long term and short term goals and objectives. Developed nations such as Australia and Singapore are establishing mechanisms that quick;y detect the onset of trends and changes that are bound to happen in their workforce especially the healthcare sector to counter for any threats that might happen in the country at large. Environmental scans form the basis of these practices.
In Australia, environmental scans are conducted every year by the Industry Skills Councils of Australia as part of their role of gathering information and undertaking a high-quality analysis of the skill-needs and profile of current and future workforce competence. Below are some of the issues in the health workforce of Australia.
The quantitative and qualitative feedbacks cited from the community safety sectors and the government suggests that the aging factor continues to be the key factor facing the health workforce across the country (Coombs et al., 2017, pp.302-316). Aging of the competent personnel has majorly led to the loss of skills/ knowledge and difficulty in finding suitable young employees for replacement. In addition, the management of an aging workforce posses a lot of challenges to the health departments in terms of achieving workplace flexibility needs, managing health issues while at work and the difficulties in recruiting radical young staff with equivalent skills.
With the increase in population and a significant ageing workforce, the demand for the service delivery in the health sector has been reported to be increasingly high. This has forced the existing workforce to work under pressure in order to meet the demand. The growth in demand has also made the individual workers to increase their scope of duty some of which end up undertaking tasks that they are not trained for nor competent enough to undertake (Perry et al., 2017).
Attraction and retention of staff remain a core factor in the health workforce. It has been reported that attraction of nurses and doctors is quite low in the public sector to replace the retired staff members making it a great challenge to the health sector(Humphreys et al., 2017).
Australia has a good quality assurance system set in place that has ensured a good quality health care to the citizens. There are the patient rights and an observed high satisfaction due to easy access to primary care. The health sector has put in place a well organised primary care across the country with a balance between the public and private sector medical services giving the citizens an opportunity to have their hospital of choice.
(Usher et al., 2018, pp.82-89) reports claim that the main weaknesses identified were the awareness the curriculum of the patient safety among most healthcare facilities. There is need to highly advocate for thorough preparation through training of the staff in regard to the patient safety and a well-structured framework that will enable the providence of post-discharge services to the patients. There is lack of total focus on rehabilitation practices in the country which is a great concern to the old age patients with chronic illness in the country.
With the advancement in technology, the health sector in the country is has invested in the use of technology to deliver a quality service to the citizens. Technology has been implemented in the healthcare facilities including in the wards, theatre facilities, and Intensive Care Unit equipment (Thomas et al., 2017, pp.67-71). Additionally, technology has made services such as emergency response to be more effective making the workforce to combine efforts efficiently in the role of saving lives.
There has been a growing preference for referral services from outside the country such as Japan where the citizens have opted to acquire the treatment. The notion of better medical care from other countries has affected the confidence of the experts in delivering complex medical attention such as critical surgeries among other medical urgencies (Phillips et al., 2018). Moreover, the shift of staff from the Australian workforce to these preferred countries has created a gap in the manpower of the required skills and competence as the experts move for better pay and greener pastures offered in other countries.
A situational analysis (SWOT) was conducted to achieve a better understanding of the internal and external environments influencing the nature of the health workforce in Singapore. Below are the key highlights obtained from the SWOT analysis.
Singapore has a strong leadership support for the health workforce that has shown readiness to address the challenges facing the workforce. Moreover, it also enjoys the success of existing healthcare programmes such as Transitional Home Care that was put in place by the ministry of health. The health workforce has a strong team with the ability to tap on its diverse expertise in the health services.
There is the need to establish an awareness to the internal stakeholders in the health sector and to strengthen the engagement of the community efforts in order to build a lasting relationship with the key community partners. There is also the need to champion for total comprehension of population profile of Singapore by the health workforce and the need for establishing a source of funding for new initiatives that support the healthcare workforce.
There has been a reported growth in interest and willingness of stakeholders to invest in healthcare and enhancement of care integration with other agencies within the country to serve the patients living in different parts of Singapore. It has also been reported that there is an existence of different population demographics in the south with the aging population and the north-east region with the younger population. Moreover, companies and different agencies in Singapore are keen to co-develop technological tools to support the population health in addition to the funding from the government to subsidise the transition care for patients.
The reported differing strategic focus and expectations among the stakeholders posses a great threat to the health sector. This is accompanied by the unexpected policy changes which most probably deter the current efforts. Also, the short-term results focused may not provide the accurate assessment of programme impact. The high cost of adopting and maintaining the technology expenses can be termed as a threat to the health sector and the need for new guidelines on issues like data sharing among the stakeholders to support the new models of care being implemented in the health sector. Finally, the ever-changing social set up in the patients’ paradigm may be a source of threat to the health sector as the models implemented today does not guarantee the satisfaction of the patient’s healthcare culture in future.
The health workforce involves different specialists including the nurses, midwives, doctors, dentists, pharmaceuticals, laboratory health workers, among others. The data was compiled from databases of different sources including the national statistics products, labour forces, employment surveys, among many by the WHO.
This category includes the general medical practitioners and the specialist medical practitioners.
This includes the nursing associates and professionals, midwifery professionals, and midwifery associates.
In regard to the health workforce, Australia faces the challenge of aging workforce that cannot adequately render healthcare service to the country adequately (Neubauer et al., 2017, pp.69-81). It has been reported that in the near future, the next Australian government is most likely to experience challenges in the funding and delivering of health care services to the people. As reflected from the data profile, the observed high life expectancy and the low infant mortality rate could be under threat in future as the healthcare system happens to be stretched by an ageing population, the increasing problem of chronic illness, and the continuously outmoded organization of the health services (Martin, Graham, and Pam, 2018, pp.28-35). The inequalities in health between the rich and the poor citizens persist making it clear that there is no room for complacency.
There is the need to focus on the prevention and management of chronic illness in the country. This requires targeting the populations with the highest needs which are primarily the aging, those living in remote communities, and the indigenous communities. There is lack of flexibility in doing this with the focus on fee-for-service and the shortage of the workforce. Furthermore, this calls for an outstanding leadership from the federal government and its related national health care departments. The changing demography and disease patterns is a serious problem among the aging as their long lives are mostly accompanied by chronic illness such as diabetes among others (Campbell et al., 2017, pp.17-42).
In addition, the rapid urban Australian population growth rate has created challenges in planning for a sustainable health care system. There has been neglect in the preservation of social amenities such as public safety, fresh food, social cohesiveness and the potential for pollution which are associated with high rates of obesity among other conditions. Moreover, there has been the problem of health inequality and concerns with equity as observed in the Australian population. Women have been reported to do better than men in terms of health issues and concerns. According to (Dockett et al., 2017), the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare fewer deaths could be experienced in the country had there been persistent health equality offered between men and women.
The main issues centred on the health workforce in Singapore revolve around the healthcare financing, healthcare manpower and an aging population. The healthcare financing of Singapore assumes the key responsibility that everyone pays for their medical expenses whereby the government pays only for subsidized basic medical care (Lee et al., 2018, pp.357-366). This has led to huge debts and hospital bills in the health sector which requires a lot of funds to be run properly.
Just like Australia, Singapore also suffers from an aging population challenge and management of chronic diseases. Reports indicate that Singapore has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, for instance, 1.27% in 2007, and one of the fastest aging population in the Western Pacific region. The challenges that come along with an aging population has greatly affected the health workforce as the skills and expertise from the aging practitioners cannot be fully transferred to the young employees (Vaithianathan et al., 2017). This condition has led to efforts by the government and the medical agencies to continually train and recruit the young staff who are received in the medical sector with a lot of expectations as a replacement of the old experienced practitioners. This rampant transformation of the short term orientation into the taskforce has subjected the new staff to pressure in order to meet the growing demand of the national healthcare culture.
Additionally, the aging workforce incurs high cases of absenteeism and sickness which leads to low productivity from the individuals. The underutilization of the task force in the health sector due to the aging factor has affected the health care service delivery and an increase in the costs of medication (Chair: and Staudinger, 2017). Singapore is also reported to have a shortage in manpower with a specialist-to-population ratio of 1:1740 and nurse-to-population ration of 1:230. In addition, there is the challenge of communicable disease control such as Dengue fever among others. From the data profiles.
Both the countries Australia and Singapore being developed nations, they have invested in the technology to harness a cost-effective communication in the health education and health information systems. The advancement and deployment of technology as a recommended by the WHO is being utilized in these countries to ensure an improved workforce competence in delivering a quality healthcare service to the nations (Tan, 2017, p.1188).
There has been improved contribution of gender equality and rights arising from the health sector with a growing employment rate of the women into the health. The WHO reported that the women are recently the main providers of care as evidenced by humanitarian conflicts and crises. However, gender biases remain a challenge to be addressed in the health workforce in these countries.
Moreover, in terms of educating, training and competencies, research has shown that both Australia and Singapore have not achieved the required degree in the number of personnel in the health workforce that can sustain the needs of their populations in terms of medical care. This has made these countries to seek expertise from other countries such as China and Japan to aid in the provision of medical skills. The WHO recommends that all countries should do more to prioritize investments in education and training of health workforce as a continual exercise which will help in countering the growing population demands in terms of health care (Jongen, et al. 2018, pp.49-64).
References
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