"We need more of us,” cried Dr Rohit Narang, a pulmonologist working double shifts at a well-known government hospital in Delhi, as he reported the 13th Covid-19 casualty in two days under his watch. “The caseload is overwhelming and there are very few of us to deal with it.” Even though the challenge cannot be overcome overnight, he believes that with sustained effort, the youth, including the large population of unemployed youth, can be skilled and trained to solve the shortages within healthcare. With National Doctor’s Day on July 1, we speak to experts on the need to bolster the system with new calibre.
Desperate demand
To prepare for a possible Covid third wave and given the paucity of qualified manpower, the Delhi government will be training 5,000 youngsters as health assistants. “This kind of preparedness is better rather than scrambling when a crisis such as the pandemic hits you in the face. Given that India needs at least 1.8 million doctors, nurses and midwives to achieve the minimum threshold of 44.5 health workers per 10,000 population in 2030, according to WHO, the future belongs to the healthcare industry. And active participation can achieve this,” says Dr Jeedhu Radhakrishnan, Consultant and Head Emergency Medicine, KMC Hospital, Mangaluru. Fields such as home care, emergency and advanced care, sample collection, medical equipment manufacturing and distribution will be in high demand in the future, according to him.
Specialised care
The ageing population of baby boomers in India needs specialised care. “With this, geriatric care is set on a growth trajectory,” says Radhakrishnan. The population of people aged 65 and above is projected to grow from 524 million in 2010 to nearly 1.5 billion in 2050, according to the Global Health and Aging report by the WHO. “It is obvious then that this surge will create employment opportunities for youngsters,” says Radhakrishnan.
Beyond doctors, surgeons and nurses Positions that have been under the radar until now, will come out of the shadows, according to him. These include prosthetics technicians, dosimetrists, phlebotomists, medical transcriptionists and more. Each of these accommodates different educational levels. “Amateurs should apply their innovative approach to education across five core areas: inclusion and diversity, promoting person-centred care, longitudinal learning, professional identity, practice and digital health and education. This will stand you in good stead,” says Dr Suranjit Chatterjee, Senior Consultant, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, Delhi.
The added advantage of flexibility at work cannot be ignored as some positions allow for remote working, a choice between day or night and weekday or weekends, or a mix of all, according to Chatterjee. Customer engagement and customer enhancement-driven jobs offer promise but departments that are perpetually short-staffed need most attention. “These include medical roboticist, custom implant organ designer and developer, occupational therapist/physical therapist, nutritionist, audiologist, radiation and nuclear physicist, bio-technologist, gene therapist, cryopreservation specialist, and genetic counsellors,” says Chatterjee.