Staff Shortage in Health Care Management

Running head: HEAELTH CARE MANAGEMENT
1
Staff Shortage in Health care management
Name
Institution Affiliate

HEALTH CARE MANAGEMENT 2
Introduction
Having an effective organization requires leadership and managerial skills for the
purpose of steering the organization in achieving its objectives and goals. In healthcare and in
medical fields there is much more consideration to be involved other than meeting the daily
objectives of the organization. Every individual in health care plays a very important role to
ensure ethical standards and health policies are adhered to for the purpose of maintaining the
health care standards and the workers in order of serving the patients effectively. In this essay,
we will focus on the leadership and managerial roles in a hospital reflecting on Gibb’s (1988)
model standards.
Gibb’s model describes how learning can be acquired through engaging in the cycle of
activities through description, feeling, evaluation, analysis, and conclusion. The model best fits
in the medical field and teacher development programs to promote learning (Mahlanze, Sibiya,
& Govender, 2015). By use of this model ensures that learners keep on learning through the
cycle which enhances their learning and improving on service delivery in the organization they
are working on. Continuous learning improves the leadership and the management in
implementing and making changes where necessary in the organization.
Description
I happened to work in one of the hospitals in town as a practicing nurse where I spend a
couple of months. I had been hired as an attaché in the hospital. The hospital used to receive
patients with different condition. Being the main hospital, we used to receive many patients both
adults and children. The shortage of workforce was the main challenge due to health work

HEALTH CARE MANAGEMENT 3
policies that stipulated the minimal working hours. Working at night shift we face a shortage of
doctors and nurses since the majority were working on day shifts. This led to the high demand
from the patients. Attending to outpatients and inpatients require attention but this did not play
well due to the density of patients. Diagnosing the patients was a great challenge since it
required the practicing doctors to do so. With the shortage of staff, this created bottleneck
resulting in the frustration of patients due to slow service delivery. Lack of enough surgeons was
another challenge that led to long queues as patient requiring surgeries had to wait for days and
some weeks depending on the urgency of the surgery. This inadequacy of health workers could
lead to long working hours due to the high demand from patients. Another issue that led to the
shortage of health workers is the annual leave. This forced some of us to extend working extra
hours to fill the gap of the absent doctors.
Feelings
Working as the caregiver can be so emotional sometimes. Having people all around you
with needs to care for require a lot of patient and self-control. The dedication can tear oneself
energy and sometimes weakening due to lack of rest. Sometimes you become sick emotionally
due to pain and stress. The management would allow us to have rest when there was no much
workload also we could be allowed to relieve one from duty when need demanded. The hospital
management did not force us to work but on voluntarily we were encouraged to work for extra
hours to compensate for absent doctors. This made us feel free and encouraged by hospital
management. The hospital used to give us incentives to facilitate our personal needs but these
were given to encourage and compensate for extra working hours. Our supervisor encouraged us
to be involved much with the health practitioners to gain more skills. The hospital management