The Canadian health care workforce is facing sustainability challenges that cannot be addressed by increasing the number of providers alone. Instead, it will require making better use of existing resources and the creation of positive working environments that support the retention of skilled and dedicated health care workers.
Significant potential exists to improve the utilization of health human resources by clarifying professional roles and responsibilities and implementing more collaborative models of care. Interprofessional collaboration has been linked with greater provider satisfaction, leading to enhanced recruitment and retention, and improved patient safety and outcomes.
Interprofessional collaboration in both education and health care delivery settings can be defined as working together with one or more members of the health care team who each make a unique contribution to achieving a common goal, enhancing the benefit for patients. Each individual contributes from within the limits of their scope of practice. It is a process for communication and decision making that enables the separate and shared knowledge and skills of different care providers to synergistically influence the care provided through changed attitudes and behaviours, all the while emphasizing patient- centred goals and values.
Improvements to the health of the workplace have been linked to a positive impact on the retention of the workforce, including reduced absenteeism and turnover. In addition, improvement in human resource practices and the work environment can lead to overall increased organizational efficiency and effectiveness, and improved patient care.
A healthy work environment can be defined as a work setting that takes a strategic and comprehensive approach to providing the physical, cultural, psychological and work conditions that maximize the health and wellbeing of providers, improves the quality of care and optimizes organizational performance.
The Pan-Canadian Health Human Resource Strategy supports the enhancement of working and learning conditions to maintain an experienced, dedicated workforce with the skills to provide high quality, safe and timely care by:
Achievements from the first five years of the Strategy (2003-2008), related to Healthy, Supportive Learning Workplaces, include:
The challenge going forward is to ensure that there is congruence between what is taught and what is modelled in practice. Future work will build on the foundation and momentum generated to ensure that interprofessional education is translated into collaborative patient-centred practice. To this end, CIHC is redirecting its priorities towards skills and capacity-building of clinicians and health service delivery organizations.
More information on related Health Canada funded projects can be found online in the Pan-Canadian Health Human Resource Strategy Annual Reports.