Article Review: Skill Mix in the Healthcare Workforce Analysis

This report provides an article review of "Skill mix in the health care workforce: reviewing the evidence." The article emphasizes the importance of skill mix, the combination of different healthcare worker categories, for effective patient care and efficient health systems. It highlights the need to understand patient-specific needs and tailor workforce skills accordingly, rather than relying on a universal ideal mix. The review examines the evidence base, including its limitations, and summarizes key findings from a literature review. It discusses how skill mix affects the roles of various healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, and care assistants, and its potential to reduce costs and improve service quality. The report also acknowledges the limitations of the article, such as the need for more robust evaluation and policy implementation to support informed decision-making in healthcare settings. It concludes by suggesting that further development of this concept can enhance productivity in healthcare environments.

Running Head: Article Review
Article Review
[Type the document subtitle]
Laptop04011
[Pick the date]

Article Review 1
Article Review: Skill mix in the health care workforce: reviewing the evidence
The article is related to the nursing practices related to skill mix in the healthcare workers that is
important for the health system. The fact should be noted that skill mix refers to the combination
of different categories employed in the work. The article highlights the importance and impact of
skills mix in the healthcare system along with the findings from several sources. Skill mix is
important for the healthcare professional because it helps them in analysing the care that is
actually required by the specific patients and to give them ideal services accordingly. The article
states that skill mix is important for the healthcare professional because the universal ideal mix is
not relevant for all the patients coming to them, whereas, it is important for the healthcare
professionals to understand the different types of needs of different patients and provide them
services accordingly. The organizations in the given case can initiate the effectiveness by
increasing the number of experienced care assistant in the environment. The World Health
Report 2000 denoted that the right mix of people is important in the healthcare industry so as to
increase the effectiveness of the system (Buchan, and Dal Poz 2002).
The article explain several policies and determinants that are required in the skill mix and the
possible intervention that can be laid in the process of implementation. The macro and micro
environmental analysis elaborated diverse types of workers and their need to implement skill
mix. Several new types of workers in include conventional support worker, nurse practitioners,
and care assistants etc. who have started expanding their job roles in order to develop skill mix
and provide better level of satisfaction to patients. The evidence of micro examination of role
overlap between the doctors and other health professionals stated that there need to be
reconstruction in the relationship between doctor and nurses as the nurses have started working
in advanced roles with an aim to initiate skills mix. The care given by the doctors is overlapped
by the caregivers in the healthcare environment (Buchan, and Dal Poz 2002).
Further, the article also elaborated that skills mix is important for the healthcare professionals
because it helps them to understand the need of the people and give them services accordingly. It
reduces the costing and increases the quality of service in the healthcare environment. The
studies showed that settings that did not use skills mix gave poor results as compared to
healthcare settings that made use of it. The universal ideal mix is not relevant because the patient
population have different needs in the environment and the care givers need to adjust their skills

Article Review 2
accordingly. However, the article has several limitations as it shows limited explanation of the
concept and its use. There needs to be robust evaluation of skills mix and implementation of
policies to support the informed decision making in the healthcare environment. Development of
this concept will help in the growth of productivity in healthcare setting (Buchan, and Dal Poz
2002).

Article Review 3
References
Buchan, J. and Dal Poz, M.R., 2002. Skill mix in the health care workforce: reviewing the
evidence. Bulletin of the World health Organization, 80, pp.575-580.