Ensuring The Next Generation Of Health Care Professionals: Still An Unmet Need

For its fifth annual Future Health Index, Royal Philips chose to focus on the insights and needs of health care professionals below the age of 40, a group that often feels unheard, and yet will form the basis of the workforce over the next two decades. Getting it right from their point of view is vital.

“The findings of the Future Health Index (FHI) 2020 demonstrate that we are at a crucial moment in the journey to the future of health care.” So said Jan Kimpen, chief medical officer at Royal Philips NV, as the group published the fifth annual edition in its series of FHI reports. The survey, of some 3,000 young doctors and nurses from 15 countries, reveals that unmet needs can apply to health care providers and health care professionals (HCPs), as well as patients.

The goal of the Philips Future Health indexes is to understand customers better and cater to their needs, especially in relation to technology, Kimpen said in comments to In Vivo. The continued ability to satisfy these needs depends largely on the ability of HCPs to play their role in delivering enhanced care enabled by innovative technologies.

But for HCPs  ̶  especially the younger generation  ̶  to feel motivated about their roles, attention must be paid to the systems they work in, the burdens that they often feel they are under, and the expectations on them to perform in the evolving health care delivery ecosystem. There were unmet needs not being addressed properly, Kimpen said.

Risk Of Disengaging Young HCPs

“If we keep organizing our hospitals as we are doing now, eventually we will disengage young people,” said Kimpen. In the survey, the respondents highlighted a lack of flexibility, not enough collaboration and high amounts of stress in their jobs. They also stressed a wish for digital solutions, integrated into the workflow. “These young doctors will be the basis of the health care workforce for the coming 20 years at least,” said the Philips CMO.

The latest FHI in the Philips series, The age of opportunity: Empowering the next generation  to transform healthcare, is an acknowledgement that there is a need to listen more to this age group. “We wanted to focus on the troubles that young health care professionals often go through, leading to high burn-out rates, people leaving the profession and staff shortages, i.e. the ominous signs we sometimes see in the ecosystem,” said Kimpen.

A Working Environment That Fosters Collaboration And Flexibility

The Future Health Index 2020 report highlighted a clear demand among younger HCPs for a work environment that fosters collaboration and flexibility.

When choosing a hospital or practice in which to work, factors such as a culture of collaboration (64%) and professional autonomy (60%) are more important to younger HCPs than a strong record of patient outcomes (48%) or the institution’s reputation (42%).

In the survey, 85% of the doctors said they were satisfied with working in their “smart hospital,” where digital tools are integrated seamlessly into the human and patient care workflows. Compared with 70% who voice approval of working in their “analog” hospitals.

They also want their leaders to reduce their stress at work: 75% of nurses and doctor regularly report work-related stress; and around 30% of doctors and nurses have considered leaving the workforce as a result. “It is clear that more stress minimization needs to be done by leaders,” said Kimpen.

The FHI reflects how this group feels about their work, whether their training prepared them for the realities of what their jobs demand, and their views about the transition to digitally enabled health care.

The stakes are high. “If we don’t adapt the health care delivery system to their needs, we will lose them, which is something we cannot afford,” said Kimpen.

The survey showed that, for HCPs, there are gaps in skills, knowledge, data, and, of great concern, in the expectations they had before entering the profession and in the reality they experience. It found that 40% said this reality was different to the promises that attracted them into a health care career.

It also showed that young professionals have a love-hate relationship with digital technology. And it showed that their working environment is very important in keeping them contented and motivated in their professional lives in the health care setting.

Not Prepared For The Business Workplace

In the survey, 44% of respondents said their training did not prepare them well for the work at hand: while it was sufficient enough for the clinical aspects, it was not adequate for the administrative and business aspects of their roles.

In this context, 80% were unaware/had very little notion of the concept of value-based health care. That was a surprising finding, in Kimpen’s view, given that this is a theme that is widely talked about and, indeed, constitutes a large part of the future of health care.  

Young HCPs look to their leaders to give them flexibility at work; 75% said they want a more flexible workplace for a better work-life balance. They also want to work in a collaborative environment.

“Young HCPs look forward to working in such an environment, and with multidisciplinary teams,” said Kimpen. While, 89% saw this is an important criterion in how and where they choose their workplace.

Young HCPs have a balanced view of digitization – seeing it as a tool, not as a goal.

Young HCPs “love” digital tools, but “hate” situations where data is not relevant or not actionable; or when there is not enough data; or when data-sharing restrictions impede diagnosis and therapy.  And they can feel overwhelmed by the data and not know how to use it. But while they often struggle with this conundrum, they also have a balanced view of digitization – seeing it as a tool, not as a goal.

They find it frustrating when presented with a lot of data that is not relevant. “This is where we as an industry can come in by not delivering solutions for single problems in small groups of patients but integrating the data in a comprehensive dashboard that can be use in multidisciplinary teams where all the data at are coming together.”

Taking the case of a cancer patient, Kimpen observed that clinicians want the all the information to hand so they can make confident decisions. “We have to be interoperable, open and able to integrate the data about a patient whatever the digital tool,“ he said. All the information must be able to be consolidated and made actionable at a single point, where the doctor can use it.

Data Sharing Culture Must Improve

Industry has another role: to press for a “looser system” for data sharing, but one that still keeps privacy and security at the highest standards. Philips found that 60% of young HCPs say they perceive restrictions on sharing as a factor of incomplete data, and “incomplete data is much worse than needing to compile all the data manually,” Kimpen ventured.

“It’s no surprise that that data privacy and are so important, but maybe we are being too protective here,” Kimpen considered. “I am confident that we will find in the coming years that we are more at ease with measures that make it easier to share data with doctors, outside the hospital or even outside the country.”

There will be a new balance. “While the direction is towards more the behavior of sharing, events like leaking and hacking could lead to more restrictive data policies, so there will likely be a continual rebalancing,” Kimpen said.

Salary and remuneration are still major topics in the satisfaction levels of younger HCPs, although it varied somewhat according to geographical location. The top 10 concerns of younger HCPs, averaged out over the 15 countries surveyed in the Philips survey, were as follows:

Motivation to work in a particular hospital or practice	15-country average (%)
Salary	75
Working hours arrangements (e.g. flexi-time, job sharing, shorter week)	72
Access to the latest technologies	71
A culture that supports the work-life balance	71
A culture of collaboration (e.g. multi-disciplinary collaboration, inter-specialty collaboration)	68
Professional autonomy (e.g. flexibility to set care plans for patients)	66
Location within the country	58
Availability of everyday workplace technology	56
Hospital/practice reputation	56
Patient outcome performance	56

Addressing The Unmet Needs Of The Under-40s

Health care is evolving into a continuous model outside of hospital and clinic walls, Kimpen noted, and while hospitals are still the central element, health care is now more devolved and more work is focused on prevention. “Hospitals will have to reinvent themselves,” he said. He also speculated that the future will see innovative reimbursement models that center on value and outcomes, with technology and data playing a crucial role.

As to staffing for the future, the key is to ensure younger HCPs thrive in what will be an increasingly- demanding environment. “This is top of my list of concerns,” said Kimpen, observing that this is a general concern among hospital managers. For them, the answer to the ‘What keeps you awake at night question, is not so much the issue of budgetary constraints but staff issues, such as retention, attrition and burnout. “That has changed over the years,” Kimpen noted.

Senior health care leaders therefore had a duty to listen to their younger colleagues, said Kimpen. In this context, the findings in the Future Health Index 2020 report will help the health care leaders of today empower the HCPs of the future, ensuring the growing demands of modern health care can be met by trained, talented, motivated and satisfied HCPs.