Analysis of Health and Social Care Sector Environment & Career Plan

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the health and social care sector, examining both external and internal influences on healthcare providers. It explores the complex relationship between the economic and social environment and health, as well as the boundaries between formal care systems, community assets, and informal care. The report delves into career planning, highlighting the importance of skills identification, decision-making, and goal setting. It also analyzes organizational structures, including policies, rules, and stakeholder relationships, using SingHealth as a case study. The report further discusses the functional and divisional structures within SingHealth, emphasizing its commitment to employee development and quality healthcare services.

Health and Social Care

Table of Contents
SSINTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................3
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................5
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................6
TASK 4............................................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
This report explains about health and social care sector or industry environment, in
context of understanding both external(such as health policy, national frameworks) and
internal(working area, members in the industries), influences of organisation on the health care
provider. The report reviews about the economic and social environment have complex and
bidirectional relationship with health. Review about boundaries between the formal care system,
community assets, informal care in families and individual health behaviour is also included in
this report. This report demonstrates the prospects of career planning and explain the various
stages regarding career plan such as skills identification and interest, decision making, career
exploring ,timeline setting to achievable goals. As having a career development plan in region
can reduces the risk of making impulsive decision. It helps to identify the opportunities and
develop the new skills. The report includes the organisation structure such as organisation
norms, policy, rules and regulation of the company in order to achieve objectives. It also includes
the behaviour, attitude and value of the employees. Structure determine the information flows
between levels within the organisation. It also explain the relationship between the organisation
and its stakeholder as these relationship build the network that develop voice regarding issues,
production issues, credibility in the organisation. Review emphasis stakeholder that fair
treatment and strong relationships with the core stakeholder is the key to long term profit and
organisation success. The organisation that has been chosen for the report is SingHealth which is
a healthcare organisation of Singapore comprising of a network of acute hospitals, speciality
centres, community health hospitals and polyclinics working with an aim to provide quality and
affordable healthcare (Sharma, Singh Aujla and Bajaj, 2019) .
MAIN BODY
TASK 1
The health care sector or medical industry is a tertiary sector which is linked with service
providing with an aim to cure and prevent diseases and disorders and provide rehabilitation and
palliative care as well. The professionals of this sector called the health care professionals or
practitioners of medicine or care providers are responsible for detecting the presence of an illness
or disorder by examining the symptoms and determining the nature of the illness or medical

condition. The care providers then provide the individual with an appropriate treatment for
curing the disorder.
The practitioners of medicine are further bifurcated on the basis of nature of illness like
dentist, general practitioners, chiropodic, nursing, pharmacy, allied healthcare and other care
providing staff. These professional are devoted to providing services and products publicly or
privately with an aim to cure the people suffering from various illnesses. The health care industry
includes health care settings of small size and private nature to a health care setting capable of
providing a wide range of healthcare services to a huge population at private as well as public
level. The nature of this industry is risky and challenging at every point because it is linked
directly with the lives and living quality of individuals (Burns and Pauly, 2018).
With ever increasing population, occurrences of various types of diseases and disorders
also increase. This makes this industry as one of the most important industries of the world along
with being one of the largest industries. Increase in the aged population and increasing
prevalence of chronic diseases makes the expansion of this sector important. This sector is a
sector of constant innovation and development due to constant incidences of occurrence of new
challenging diseases. It is the sector in which is accompanied by the highest level of researches
going on in various medical fields. This sectors involves providing primary, secondary as well as
tertiary care. Primary care is linked with the care provided by the general practitioner or
physician who is responsible for taking care of the health of an individual. Secondary care is the
care involving consultation with a specialist such as a cardiologist, neurologists etc. Tertiary care
is linked with providing care that involves use of specialised equipments and care based on the
information provided by the secondary care (Ginter, Duncan, and Swayne,2018).
The healthcare services of all three levels can be delivered at health care settings, individual's
home place and can be delivered at the workplace of the individual. The medical industry also
comprises of professionals other than the medical practitioners like medical wrongdoings
attorney, marketers, administrators etc.
Social care is also a part of the health care industry but it is comparatively less involved
in care related to treatment and prevention of a disease. This type of care is linked with providing
the required support to vulnerable group of people of the society like the elderly group, the
specially abled group and the terminally ill patients etc. these social care settings assist the

vulnerable group in performing everyday activities and provide the terminally ill patients with an
environment to live their last days of life with peace and happiness (Hujala and Laihonen, 2021).
An example of a health care organisation is SingHealth which is a largest group of
healthcare institutions in Singapore. It consist of four public hospitals, five national speciality
centres, three community hospitals and eight polyclinics. Sing Health provides the public with a
wide range of comprehensive services with expertise in about 40 clinical specialities making it
capable of providing multidisciplinary care (Yan,et.al., 2019).
TASK 2
With an ever increasing number of illnesses and mutations in organisms resulting in even
more deadly infectious diseases, this industry has no limit. The healthcare industry is such an
industry which requires constant innovations and advancement. This makes it an industry which
will always be open for incorporating new individuals with new skills and new research ideas for
the betterment of the industry. The health care industry of the country bears a great importance in
betterment of lives of the population by eliminating their illness making it an essential sector for
the development of a nation (Bhattacharya, and Goswami, 2020).
The various prospects of healthcare industry include being a physician be it a general
physician or a specialist, a pharmacist, a nurse practitioner, therapist, dietician, dentist,
veterinarian, chiropractor, the care providing professionals , and technologists. Every profession
in the medical industry has its own importance and contribution in the maintenance of health of
population. The reasons that motivate a person to choose a career in health care industry are that
this profession is rewarding in its own way. Helping people to improve their quality of life by
helping them get rid of their health issues give a different kind of satisfaction. This sector not
only fulfils the inner satisfaction but also is a very highly paying sector of the world. This sector
is also for those individuals those wish to keep advancing and developing in their life as this
sector requires constant research and innovations (Britnell, 2019).
This sector fulfils one's wish of helping others and simultaneously earning a living for
themselves ant their family. Working in a health care sector also have positive effects on self
health and also provides security for receiving healthcare if required in future. The individuals
who wish to bring a change in the overall well being of the nation, entering this sector is the best
option for such people. The healthcare industry is stated to be the fastest growing industry in the

coming years by The Bureau of Labour Statistics making this an excellent career choice for the
coming generation.
The profession of doctor is considered to be next to god but the other professions are also
equally important. The increasing rate of incidences of adverse effects of drugs involved in
treatment of various diseases is becoming the leading cause of hospitalisation and increasing the
requirement of funds for side effect related disorders. Pharmacist is such a profession that can
reduce this cost by a huge amount. The profession of nurses is such that the profession of doctors
will be affected by the absence of nurses. Same is the case with other professions of medical
field even if it is a profession of a phlebotomist (Brulhart, Gherra and Quelin, 2019)
TASK 3
The functional structure of SingHealth organises it workers by formation of groups
which are based on their specific skills and knowledge. The structure is vertical in nature as each
department work in vertical direction such as from president to finance, sales to customer
department. This organisation have specialised unit that submit the report to top management.
The divisional structure of the organisation segments the employees based on service provided
by them. The organisational structure of this health care organisation includes:
Academic chair person and Academic deputy chair person which manages the
departments of clinical service, Education, care transformation and innovation, research and
philanthropy.
Clinical service department which is related to the services provided in screening,
assessment, treatment planning, case management and counselling.
A patient health education system allows the patient to inspect all the aspects of healthcare
journey at SingHealth, giving them complete freedom to control their health care journey.
Singapore has been facing some challenges such as increasing chronic and acute disease, rising
healthcare cost, increasing population, decreasing healthcare member so it need to transform its
care providing.
The care transformation and innovation department helps the healthcare organisation in
innovation related matters. It revolutionises the emergency care through patient centric
innovation and also building the community network to reinforce out emergency response,
innovation system develops technological tools to laminar processes and increases safety.

The research department is important in healthcare services to provide data, evidence
and tools to make healthcare safe, affordable and accessible. The philanthropy is an
extraordinary engine of innovation and its purpose is to improve well being of humankind by
preventing and solving social problems. (Perdana, and Mokhtar, 2022)
As mentioned above, SingHealth comprises of polyclinics, general hospitals, National
Speciality centres, and community hospitals. The polyclinics are involved in providing general
as well as specialised treatment to the outpatients for various disorders. The general hospitals are
involved in providing treatment to all kind of medical cases as well as surgical cases but it
mainly focuses on providing treatment of diseases which are acute in nature. The national
speciality centres at SingHealth provide specialised care in about 40 specialities along with it the
hospital uses the most advanced technologies for specialised care providing.the community
hospitals under this organisation are involved in providing a range of serviceslike community
beds maternity related care, treating minor injuries, X-ray facilities etc. for the local communities
SingHealth also provide medical education and training to students through various colleges like
College of clinical medicine, College of clinical nursing etc.
The culture at SingHealth is very employee friendly and promotes employees to achieve
their career aspirations. The organisation provides the employees with such a working
environment that they increase their potential and give the best of their efficiency in providing
care to the service users. This organisation treats its employees as an asset to the organisation
and tries to treat all the employees equally regardless of his nature of job in the organisation. The
organisation remunerates all its employees with competitive salaries and also provides them with
organisational support. SingHealth aims at being the employer of choice by providing an
environment for the staff to thrive, develop comprehensively as well as professionally and
provide the staff with such opportunities which gains the care providers the work satisfaction
they seek(Ow Yong, Goh, and Chew, 2021)
TASK 4
Stakeholders of an organisation can be an individual, a group of people, an organisation
or a system which gets affected or affects the functioning of an organisation. The major
stakeholders of a healthcare organisation consist of the service users consisting of patients, the
care service providers, the funding bodies, and the policy makers. Other than these the other
stakeholders involve the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industries, medical

equipments providers and the government. The relation between the healthcare organisation and
the stakeholders is very important because the working of an organisation depends on these
stakeholders. The stakeholders of an organisation are important for providing the organisation a
strategic direction for working.
There are two types of stakeholders of an organisation, first being the internal
stakeholders include the employees, health care professional, administration team and other
clinical and non clinical staff. The external stakeholders consist of suppliers, patients, the
insurance companies and the financial aids to the organisation. The external stakeholders are
responsible for providing the organisation with proposals for changes and the internal
stakeholders are responsible for implementation of the changes (Christou, Farmaki and
Evangelou, 2018).
SingHealth tries to maintain transparency with its stakeholders and suppliers. The
organisation lays emphasis on building healthy relationship with its suppliers and service users
and promotes good communication between the internal and external stakeholders. Good
communication strengthens the organisation's collaboration with its suppliers so that the supply
and availability of inventories required for care providing are maintained. For maintaining this
transparency and good communication with the suppliers, SingHealth has a platform called
Supplier Forum platform and a Supplier Award platform for recognising and appreciating the
excellence of suppliers and for being committed to SingHealth.
At SingHealth, evidence based communication theories are implemented for maximising the
reach and engagement of research the stakeholders. As all health care organisations do
SingHealth also values its service users that is the patients. SingHealth has made its common
purpose to put “Patients at the heart of all we do” to ensure that the patients are well supported
during care receiving. They strongly emphasises on safety of the patients and promote
continuous improvement in order to receive maximum possible positive outcomes (Low, et.al.
2018).
SingHealth also focuses on providing its employees with organisational support so that
the employee satisfaction is not neglected and promote maintenance of healthy relationship
between the workers as well as between the management and workers. This healthy relationship
increases the efficiency of the care workers in care providing. SingHealth also tries to keep its

share holders satisfied by meeting their return expectations so that the financial flow in the
organisation can be maintained (Hu, Chong, and Wang, 2019).
CONCLUSION
The above report consisted of the nature and environment of the health and social care
sector. This report also consisted of the positive aspects of choosing healthcare industry to chose
a profession into. Along with it this report provides information about the various prospects that
can be considered by the future generation for deciding the direction of their career. The report
took SingHealth as an example of the healthcare organisation includes the functional and
divisional structure of the chosen organisation. In addition to this, the functions, services
provided by the organisation and the culture and environment that organisation provides its
employees with is also mentioned in the report. The report also consist of the nature of
relationship between the organisation and its stakeholders. Therefore, it can be concluded that
the healthcare industry is an excellent industry to pursue a career into and a healthcare
organisation need to maintain good relationships with its employees, its service users, its
suppliers and shareholders to maximise its efficiency of care providing.

REFERENCES
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