The Health Institution and the Role of Health Professionals: A Comprehensive Guide
The Health Institution: A Complex System
The health institution is a complex system with a particular hierarchical organizational structure and general operating principles to ensure that it achieves its objectives. The overall objective is to care for the health of citizens. To achieve this goal, health institutions employ health professionals (health personnel) and other non-health personnel.
Health institutions can be public or private. According to their scope, hospitals can be national, regional, provincial, district, or municipal. According to their functions, hospitals may be:
- General hospitals: These hospitals offer all medical branches and surgical interventions.
- Specialized hospitals: These hospitals are dedicated to specific specialties, such as maternity hospitals, children’s hospitals, or cancer hospitals.
Besides the role of care, public health increasingly emphasizes prevention. This is conducted through actions aimed at promoting health, such as vaccinations and smoking cessation programs.
The public’s perception of the assistance they receive from health institutions depends on three factors:
- Space and environment: This includes factors like cleanliness, lighting, ventilation, and modernity.
- Organizational efficiency: This includes factors like effectiveness, responsiveness to patient needs, and the availability of resources.
- The team treating the patient: This includes the professionalism, communication skills, and empathy of the healthcare providers.
The Task: Teamwork in Healthcare
A team is an organized group of people who share a common goal. In healthcare institutions, there is a multidisciplinary team, meaning it is formed by professionals with different training, whose activities complement each other. Each member has a place in the team, which is recognized by others. The team is more than the sum of its members.
Elements Conditioning Team Performance
- Personal characteristics and professional qualifications of individuals: This includes factors like quality and ownership in the work.
- Acceptance of standards and objectives: This includes the degree to which team members agree on the goals and methods of the team.
- Personal identification with the team’s mission: This includes the degree to which team members feel connected to the team’s purpose.
- Leadership style: This includes the effectiveness of the leader in coordinating the team’s efforts.
- Internal communication networks: This includes the effectiveness of communication channels within the team.
- Task complexity: This includes the difficulty and scope of the team’s work.
- Work environment: This includes factors like working hours, wages, and physical space.
Teams in healthcare institutions evolve over time, working through different phases and using different mechanisms to address conflict situations and adapt to changes. Relationships between team members must be based on acceptance, mutual respect, objectivity, open communication, consensus-building, and confidence in decisions.
The Role of Health Professionals
The role of a health professional is the part they play in a social group or in a specific action. While patients receive help from a team of health professionals (auxiliaries, doctors, psychologists, etc.), each professional must establish a relationship with the patient. Trust is not established with an entire team, but with an individual.
Staff Attitudes of Health Professionals
- Affective neutrality: Health professionals should approach patients with a degree of emotional distance that allows them to work objectively. This does not imply a lack of sensitivity.
- Equal treatment for all patients: Health professionals should treat all patients with the same level of respect and care.
- Focus on patient health care: Health professionals should focus on providing the best possible care for their patients, without making value judgments about their lifestyle or situation.
Elements That Determine the Relationship Between Health Professionals and Patients
Kind of Disease
- Urgent situation: In cases of emergencies (e.g., broken bones, bleeding), the patient may be unable to participate in decision-making. The professional acts independently, while the patient is passive.
- Severe disease: In cases of severe diseases, particularly infectious ones, the patient is often aware of what is happening and can follow instructions and make decisions. The professional and patient cooperate.
- Chronic disease: In cases of chronic diseases, the patient takes on a greater responsibility for managing their treatment plan. The professional provides guidance and support, while the patient actively participates in their care.
Power Dynamics
- Paternalistic relationship: In this model, the professional has the power to decide what information and services they provide, and the patient follows their instructions. This is the most traditional model and is often preferred by both professionals and patients.
- Clientelist relationship: In this model, the patient has the power and requests information and services from the professional. The patient becomes a customer, and the professional becomes a provider of health services. The patient decides whether to”bu” the service or not, making the medical encounter a market transaction.
- Egalitarian relationship: In this model, both parties share power and work together to improve the patient’s health. The relationship is an encounter between equals who make decisions together.