Strategies to Address Workforce Variation in Healthcare Settings

This report examines the impact of workforce variation on healthcare delivery, specifically addressing communication barriers between patients and healthcare staff. The diversity of the healthcare workforce, including language and cultural differences, can lead to misunderstandings, patient dissatisfaction, and compromised quality of care. The report emphasizes the importance of interventions like interpreter services and cultural competency training to bridge these gaps. It highlights the negative impacts of miscommunication, such as medication errors and prolonged hospital stays, and advocates for patient-centered care. The report also stresses the need for healthcare administrators and clinical leaders to implement these strategies, monitor their effectiveness, and continuously assess the behavioral outcomes of the workforce to improve patient care. The report references several studies to support its findings, emphasizing the importance of educational programs and professional skill development to address gaps in care and enhance the overall healthcare environment.

Running head: WORKFORCE VARIATION
Workforce variation
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

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Workforce variation patterns significantly influence the delivery of care. This is said
because with diversity of workforce and recruitment of expatriate staffs in health care setting,
effective communication between patient and care provider is compromised. The most issue that
can be encountered during such situation is that language and cultural gap becomes high and this
significantly influence the provision of quality care. For example, Almutairi (2015) revealed that
cultural and language gap between the health workforce and the patient result in
misunderstanding between them, which in turn contributes to patient dissatisfaction and quality
of care. Hence, as miscommunication is a factor that can directly impair the provision of safe and
quality health care, considering the approaches to address workforce variation and aligning their
skills in accordance with patient needs is crucial to add value to care delivery process. This paper
will give a reflection on ways to address barriers in care delivery due to workforce variation and
implement measures to improve the communication process.
Quality issues in health care arise because of diversity in workforce patterns and gap in
communication between patient and staff. Language difference has been identified as one of the
risk factors that lead to poorer quality of care and patient safety issues. Hence, to ensure that
patient care experience is optimized, it is proposed to focus on interventions that promote
language concordance between patients and staffs. This is importance because when a health
care staffs is not able to interact effectively with patients, it has a negative impact on chronic
disease management process. Crucial information about patient is missed and it limits the
opportunity to provide patient centered care (de Moissac & Bowen, 2019). Thus, to optimize the
patient care process, it is necessary to implement interpreter service to add value to care. If
patients are not proficient with English language, then communication issues become the root
cause of medication errors, repeated hospital admissions and prolonged hospital stay. In contrast,

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the key advantage of the use of interpreter service is that such service has the potential to
increase access to information for health care staffs and it can improve disclosure process in
patient-provider communication (Osae-Larbi, 2016).
Another common issue that arises due to the recruitment of a diverse workforce is that
staffs fail to understand the values that individual patient have towards their culture. Because of
the lack of understanding of individual patient’s cultural preference, staffs fail to develop a
therapeutic relationship with patient. In addition, as cultural values of patients are compromised,
many patients lack trust with the health care system and avoids seeking care in hospital (Gonzalo
et al., 2017). Almutairi (2015) gives the evidence in countries like Saudi Arabia, lack of
knowledge of cultural values among non-Muslim creates cultural conflicts which eventually
results in dissatisfaction with care. Hence, to ensure that diverse workforce is successfully
retained in the health care setting, it is essential to increase time and effort in cultural
competence training. The key advantage of such intervention is that it can modify attitude, skills
and behavior of health care staffs towards patient. Most importantly, it can also reduce disparities
in care caused by racial discrimination. Truong, Paradies and Priest (2014) give overview of
different cultural competency interventions implemented in clinical setting and confirmed the
effectiveness of such programs in improving cultural knowledge of staffs as well as promoting
patient outcomes.
The above solution needs to be implemented by the health care administrators or clinical
leaders as they have the responsibility to regularly monitor any gaps and inefficiencies in care
and take relevant actions accordingly. To add value to the health care delivery process, it is
recommended that the clinical managers pay attention to the ways to retain diverse workforce
and they must arrange funds so that they develop the expertise to communicate with culturally

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diverse patient group. To ensure long-term effectiveness of cultural competency training and
interpreter service, it is essential that clinical leaders implement proper assessment process to
evaluate behavioral outcomes of the workforce and its impact on patient care experience
(Jongen, McCalman & Bainbridge, 2018). Such consideration is likely to enhance the health care
environment.
From the above review of diversities in workforce pattern and its impact on
communication between patient and staffs, it can be said that educational programs and
professional skill development related programs are crucial to address gaps in care. In case of
diverse health staffs, interpreter service and cultural competence training are important system
based changes that can add value to the system. To enhance the effectiveness of such
intervention, it is crucial for clinical leaders and management to continuously monitor care
quality and patient outcomes.

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References:
Almutairi K. M. (2015). Culture and language differences as a barrier to provision of quality care
by the health workforce in Saudi Arabia. Saudi medical journal, 36(4), 425–431.
doi:10.15537/smj.2015.4.10133
de Moissac, D., & Bowen, S. (2019). Impact of language barriers on quality of care and patient
safety for official language minority Francophones in Canada. Journal of Patient
Experience, 6(1), 24-32.
Gonzalo, J. D., Graaf, D., Johannes, B., Blatt, B., & Wolpaw, D. R. (2017). Adding value to the
health care system: Identifying value-added systems roles for medical students. American
Journal of Medical Quality, 32(3), 261-270.
Jongen, C., McCalman, J., & Bainbridge, R. (2018). Health workforce cultural competency
interventions: a systematic scoping review. BMC health services research, 18(1), 232.
doi:10.1186/s12913-018-3001-5
Osae-Larbi J. A. (2016). Bridging the language barrier gap in the health of multicultural
societies: report of a proposed mobile phone-based intervention using Ghana as an
example. SpringerPlus, 5(1), 900. doi:10.1186/s40064-016-2602-x
Truong, M., Paradies, Y., & Priest, N. (2014). Interventions to improve cultural competency in
healthcare: a systematic review of reviews. BMC health services research, 14, 99.
doi:10.1186/1472-6963-14-99