Healthcare systems need to combine expertise, accessibility, and efficiency in a way that produces the highest possible number of positive outcomes. Unfortunately, this is all too often easier said than done. For one thing, there are capacity constraints virtually everywhere in the United States.
The average hospital is short at least a handful of nurses, and any many parts of the country, the issue is quite a bit more significant than that. Even in the rare communities where capacity isn’t a concern, the logistics of coordinating high levels of care consistently are difficult to maintain and develop.
How can communities build better healthcare teams? Let’s get into it.
Specialization
Communities have better access to high-quality care when there is robust access to specialists because these healthcare professionals develop deep expertise in specific conditions, leading to more accurate diagnoses and effective treatments. Nurses, for example, have the ability to get very granular with the focus of their careers. They can do this in a couple of ways.
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Advanced practice nurses undergo extensive graduate education that prepares them to handle complex health conditions independently. Nurse practitioners can diagnose and treat illnesses, order and interpret tests, and prescribe medications. Clinical nurse specialists focus on specific patient populations or healthcare settings.
You don’t need to go to graduate school to get a special certification.
Specialized certifications allow registered nurses to demonstrate expertise in areas like oncology, critical care, or wound management. These credentials require passing rigorous exams that test specialized knowledge and clinical judgment. Certifications signal to employers and patients that the nurse has mastered a specialized body of knowledge.
Once you’ve obtained the certification, you can often start working in these fields before you’ve obtained the certification. Many actually require that the professional get work experience before the certification can be completed.
These specialization routes are beneficial because professionals who obtain them have deep knowledge of specific conditions, allowing them to deliver precise, evidence-based care tailored to particular health challenges. Of equal importance is the fact that specialists are easier to make than doctors.
It can take 15 years after undergraduate studies for a doctor to be fully ready to work in their community. A nurse practitioner is ready to go in three.
Effective Communication Protocol
Healthcare communications have admittedly come a long way in recent years.
The digitalization of healthcare records has created accessible electronic systems where patient histories and test results can be retrieved instantly across different facilities. This innovation has eliminated paper charts and enabled seamless information sharing. This has made it very easy for healthcare providers to access patient records.
It’s also resulted in unprecedented accessibility for the patients themselves. You’ve probably punched the more obscure results of a blood panel test into Google to see how you are doing.
Healthcare still faces significant communication gaps. Information is often lost during provider-to-provider handoffs. Medical jargon creates barriers to patient understanding. Many underserved populations lack access to digital health platforms.
Some of the issues are tech-related. Though digital communication technology is pretty spectacular these days, there are still gaps—either in tech configurations, or in comprehension.
Healthcare systems can improve upon tech-related communication gaps by constantly reviewing their tech stack and possibly even using the services of a consultancy firm.
On the patient side of things, there are several other steps that can be taken. For one thing, healthcare teams can make clearer patient-level communication a bigger priority. Most people have experiences hasty consultations with physicians. The reasons for this are often justifiable. Most doctors don’t have more than 5-6 minutes to speak with a patient.
And of course, they are also very confident in their own decision-making. They can justify the speed of the communication with the certainty that they are making the right choice. Fine on paper, but not ideal for something a personal as healthcare. Making a more deliberate effort to ensure the patient feels well-informed can go a long way toward boosting their confidence in the system and improving long-term outcomes.
Emphasize Strong Leadership
Hospitals and healthcare clinics have a clear leadership hierarchy that is defined on organizational charts. Leadership structures are important because they are designed to streamline efficiency and ensure that everyone is positioned to do what is needed.
Leadership also informs the experience of everyone working for the organization. That’s important because, as we’ve mentioned throughout this article, so many of the problems that modern healthcare systems face are the direct result of staffing shortages.
Does having a good boss keep a nurse around when they really want to leave? Of course not. There are loads of reasons why medical professionals churn out. Most of those reasons have nothing to do with who their bosses are.
That said, anything and everything helps. A good leader can create an environment that nurses don’t want to leave.
Conclusion
It’s easy, from the comfort of a computer screen, to wax philosophic on solutions to deep problems. If the solution to improved healthcare were actually straightforward, someone would have come up with it already.
Keep in mind that even if logistical issues were to miraculously get ironed out, there are still problems at the infrastructural level that need to be corrected. Care is expensive. Rural and urban communities struggle to access even standard services. Also, there’s a fundamental recruitment issue that has been plaguing healthcare communities long before COVID accelerated RN churn rates. The basic problem? More people leave healthcare jobs than enter them. That’s an issue with no speedy solution. Regardless of how hard things sometimes are, optimizing for efficiency never hurts. Communities all over the country can experience better access to care through thoughtful team planning and management.
