Let's see if you recognize this situation: endless care agendas full of telephone visits that do not add value, repeated requests that do not follow a scheduling logic or a reasonable priority, few and highly complex face-to-face visits that take up more time than expected, tense situations with some patients and, finally, ending the day with a bitter feeling that the work is pending or poorly resolved...
If the answer is yes, you are in luck because your organization will need deep changes that can be an opportunity for transformation and collective motivation.
Although the factors that can influence the construction of a successful model are innumerable, we are going to focus on three elements that can help boost your health team. Let's get started!
1. We will innovate in the consultation: it is time to make it different!
Change is a door that always opens from within. For this reason, in your team, change necessarily involves revising the attitudes of its professionals and managers. Although the pandemic has exacerbated the historical burnout of healthcare professionals and structural criticism has been imposed in a loop, it is often based on old problems and doesn't respond to the new needs of the patient or the organization.
Yes, it is true, innovating is more pricey than criticizing! But we must make an effort to overcome this impediment and make professionals aware of their potential to promote different ways of working and of the impact that their actions have on the health team as a whole. and, especially, in their patients.
An effective measure is the creation of a weekly space for the management, organization, and anticipation of the consultation, where all those bureaucratic tasks that on many occasions constitute real-time thieves could be concentrated, such as reviewing medication plans, sick leave, reports, or review of analytics or tests, among many other tasks.
Another relevant element is the management of the clinical interview and the management of time in the consultation. Each professional must find their balance between increasing the offer of face-to-face visits that respond to the needs of their patients in a reasonable time and, at the same time, the ability to reserve some space to deal with situations that require more time than expected.
2. Let's bet on the team! New roles need to be promoted.
Answer honestly: does your team take advantage of the capabilities of all its members? Surely not. To move forward, professionals must develop new skills, improve their interactions and synergies, and review strategic processes to be more decisive. Let's look at some examples.
The group of nurses is essential in a health team, not only because of their skills but also because of their dynamism, experience, and collaborative spirit. If you still don't have an effective circuit for the resolution of acute pathologies, it is time for nurses to lead it. The commitment to the newly released nurse prescription can help you clear the way.
The chronic patient care strategy must expand its perimeter. The classic "basic care unit" made up of a doctor and a nurse admits many other formats and can be added to it by health administrators, clinical assistants, and even other doctors or nurses who serve the patient as complementary references.
Nurses carry out a necessary task in the field of health education but, in some cases, the health administrators to whom they can be assigned and to the population must also be involved in this task. They can also participate in the delivery of results and even in the detection of incipient signs of decompensation due to lack of connection with the team, due to lack of therapeutic compliance, or due to the presence of some guiding symptom.
And what about clinical assistants? Well, their role goes beyond replenishing consultations since their involvement is clear in performing techniques such as electrocardiograms, eye fundus, or obtaining the INR, both in the workplace and at the patient's home.
3. Accessible yes. But also, adaptable and flexible
Can you list the means your patients can use to contact you? Direct programming systems from apps, electronic consultations, web programming systems for reasons, telephone visits, administrative consultations, and, of course, face-to-face visits have been added to the classic call centres
In this new scenario, we could say that accessibility is good, but at what cost? The culture of immediacy and the widespread use of new communication systems cause an increase in non-face-to-face consultations and on many occasions directed to the wrong professional, so we are facing a risk of lack of value.
And what can we do about this? Well, we just have to adapt and experiment. The face-to-face and non-face-to-face models must coexist forever and although this relationship is not going through its best moment, the organization must review it regularly and dare to try new work schemes with each professional until they achieve their own balance.
Good health teams, in addition to being accessible, must be flexible and be able to react quickly and adapt rapidly, to be able to face future innovations that we are currently still unaware of.
As Mario Benedetti said: "Just when we thought we had all the answers, suddenly the questions changed." And it is that fortunately the system is alive, it evolves and progresses continually. So everything is possible! The only impossible thing is to resist change and not evolve or transform. If we have reached that point of blockage, we face the challenge of changing ourselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment