Solution
Soumi answered on
Apr 27 2021
Running Head: HUMAN HEALTH RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT: GERMANY 1
HUMAN HEALTH RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT: GERMANY 7
ANALYSIS OF HUMAN HEALTH RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT IN GERMANY
.
Introduction
Human Resource for Health (HRH) refers to the all the workforce or all the individuals who are engaged with the healthcare sector with the primary intent to enhance the health of people (Mossialos et al., 2016). This is a collaborative term, which includes physicians, nursing, midwives and other allied healthcare community and professionals. However, globally there is shortage of HRH, which is affecting the healthcare. This study focuses the challenges faced by healthcare related to HRH in Germany and the reforms being implemented in last 5-10 years along with their effects and subsequently the recommendations to improve the issues pertaining to HRH.
Key Challenges
Hospitals are the backbone of healthcare system and possess most of the workforce involved in healthcare. HRH does not only include the professionals who have direct link with healthcare, but other workers who are indirectly related such as health service managers, technician and economists. However, according to the data presented by Schermuly et al. (2015), due to high personal density or patient density in the German hospitals crises related to HRH are very critical factor that affects the safety of patients and have serious impact to the success of hospitals.
Staff shortage is a major challenge in the healthcare sectors mainly due to lack of skilled workers and large workload due to increased number of patients and unavailability of work force. Furthermore, hospitals are dangerous workplaces where employees are exposed to all kinds of diseases which spread to others and results in more staff shortages (Darzi and Evans, 2016). Shortage of staff in Germany is a major issue because the number of doctors is lesser in Germany, although, the numbers of professionals from other medical or medicine disciplines such as dentists or physiotherapists are quite high. As has been found, Germany has the largest number of physiotherapists that is 225 per 100,000 people living in the country (Europa, 2016). This number increased at a rate of 36 physiotherapists per year per 100,000 in Germany. Besides, dentist graduates are also the highest in number in Germany, with 2,400 individuals graduated in 2016 (Europa, 2016). On the other hand, the number of pharmacists graduating in the country is comparatively lesser than the other major countries of the European Union (EU) such as the UK or Italy. There were only 2,200 pharmacy graduates as compared to 3,500 in the UK and 3,700 in Italy (Europa, 2016).
Nevertheless, the number of doctors has increased in the past decade because in 2014, about 365,200 doctors were recruited for practice in Germany, with 4,100 doctors per 100,000 populations in the country (Statista, 2014). Moreover, the attempt of increasing density of doctors should also be taken, as there is only one doctor per 214 inhabitants in Germany. Cu
ently, there are 35 medical universities in Germany and a number of nursing schools, with varied fee structures (Studying in Germany, 2019).
Another key challenge to HRH is the provision of medications in German hospitals and misuse of the superiors or the individuals having access to them. Especially, alcohol and anaesthetic drugs being misused and as a result, individuals become addict and are i
egular towards job, which again lead to increased workload and staff shortage (Schermuly, C. C et al., 2015).
Reforms implemented
The key challenged mentioned were some of the major problems observed in the healthcare and hospitals. In order to strengthen the healthcare, German government had made health insurance necessary from 2009 for all the citizens and especially for the permanent citizens either through statutory or private health insurance. In addition, Germany spends a substantial amount on healthcare that is 11.4% of total GDP, which is the highest amount of expenditure on healthcare, among all other European countries (Busse and Blumel, 2014).
The healthcare...