Innovating Healthcare Staffing

In this article, we will address how to become an administrative assistant in health, especially in category C of this profile. To become an administrative collaborator with the ASLs and Healthcare Companies, it is necessary to pass the competitive tests typical of public competitions.

We will see what are the subjects to be studied and the expected tests, but above all what the work of those who cover this role consists of, investigating the tasks and professional contexts.

Administrative Assistant Category C In Health

Employees in the health sector hold roles that are regularly managed by a National Collective Labor Agreement (CCNL), which is the source of legislation through which workers’ trade unions have structured their duties, obligations, rights, and protections, as well as the salaries of workers, which are divided into different categories.

The CCNL of health also divides the roles into categories, and the administrative assistant belongs to Category C. He is not alone but in good company.

Category C includes roles that require basic specialized theoretical knowledge, with high technical skills to be able to carry out the decisive actions for the job in question.

In category C as an administrative assistant, the duties concern areas of intervention in which it is necessary to possess consolidated skills of autonomy and responsibility, coordination and control of other operators. These operators and other personnel are managed and led toward the achievement of certain objectives.

The following fall into Category C:

• health care professionals
• nurses
• pediatric nurses
• midwives
• dieticians
• health assistants
• podology
• dental hygienists
• technical health personnel, as health technician of biomedical laboratory, medical radiology, orthopedic, neurophysiopathology, dental technician, cardiocirculatory physiopathology technician, and cardiovascular perfusion, optical
• rehabilitation personnel, such as audiometrist technician, hearing aid technician, physiotherapist, speech therapist, neuro and psychomotor therapist of developmental age, psychiatric and psychosocial education and rehabilitation technician, occupational therapist, professional educator
• surveillance and inspection personnel
• social assistance staff
• professional worker Social worker
• personnel and technical assistant, with tasks of technical importance and engaged in roles such as investigations, surveys, measurements, graphic representations, inspections, and technical appraisals, taking care of the maintenance of the required documentation, supervising the execution of the assigned works, and ensuring compliance with the security, such as computer programmers
• administrative staff

Administrative Assistant Category C: Duties and Requirements

The Category C Health Administrative Assistant can be both an administrative assistant in the hospital, but not only, but also within other health organizations. Let’s see even more in detail what the occupations and duties of the administrative staff are classified in Category C1.

When within this category the professional plays the role of collaborator or administrative assistant, he is employed to deploy his skills in management, finance, and planning. It is assumed that he has technical accounting and data analysis knowledge that can be useful to him to carry out the assignment in a precise and efficient way.

In some contexts, the administrative health assistant deals with the coordination of staff and other third parties, but in others, he can carry out his activity alone and with full autonomy. You collect, organize and process complex information, including related to reporting.

It can issue copies, certificates, and extracts. In some ways, his duties are related to secretarial, classification, and collating duties, but in reality, he has more responsibilities and, even if this word may be misunderstood, “prestige”.…

According to the CBS statistics agency, 211,000 people work in health care, including 133,000 specialized nurses and 78,000 other nurses. About 80 percent work part-time.

On the other hand, there are figures on the need for care: in 2031, hospitals may have to deal with a shortage of 24,400 employees, and nursing homes even with a shortage of 51,900 employees. This emerged at the end of 2020 from a study by ABF Research commissioned by the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sport.

It is clear to all parties that we need to turn the tide. But the question is: how?

Have Staff Work An Extra Hour A Week

According to Wieteke Graven, founder of the Het Potentieel Pakken (HPP) foundation, the answer is simple: tempt existing staff to work more hours. “It is well known that the majority of healthcare workers work part-time; more than half even work less than 24 hours a week.

As a 2018 McKinsey report showed, if the part-timers work one hour more per week, you could reduce the labor shortage in to solve the problem.”

The problem, according to Graven, is that within the healthcare sector, the main focus is on recruiting new staff, while most of the dropouts of healthcare staff occur within two years of training. “We know from research that job satisfaction is the most important reason for healthcare staff to stay. Investing in the well-being of your staff therefore pays off. It also reduces absenteeism and absenteeism.”

Talk To Each Other

Graven advises healthcare institutions to talk to their staff. “Enter a conversation with employees and ask: what does it take for you to work more? By offering employees the opportunity to better align their working conditions with the stage of life they are in, you prevent people from getting stuck.”

According to Graven, both employers and employees still make many incorrect assumptions. For example, employers think that employees do not want to work more hours, while employees assume that changes to their contracts are not possible. “In order to uncover such matters, the HPP Foundation initiates discussions with and between both parties.”

Although several universities of applied sciences now have training programs, hospitals hardly make use of them.

Corine Latour, Director of Nursing Education According to Corine Latour, lecturer, and director of nursing courses at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, healthcare institutions must respond better to the changing society. “When I started my bachelor’s degree in nursing 35 years ago, I went through it – if I may be honest – with two fingers in my nose.”

According to Latour, the current courses are of a much higher level. In addition, the current batch of students also wants to follow a master’s degree after obtaining their bachelor’s degree. “Students-to-be who come to our open days immediately ask about further education.”

Not All Students Want To Gain Practical Experience For Further Education

And that is exactly where the shoe pinches as far as Latour is concerned: “While long before the corona crisis, we were always told that there was insufficient enthusiasm for the courses for IC nurse and acute care.” But that’s not true, says Latour.

“The influx of new students is definitely there, but hospitals say to students who have completed their bachelor’s degree and want to do further education: first go and gain practical experience for six months or a year. Those students don’t feel like it at all, so they prefer them a career elsewhere.”

According to Latour, this reluctance stems from trepidation: “We have always done it this way, so we will continue to do it that way. Hospitals are afraid to try out new training courses. Although several universities of applied sciences now have them, hospitals hardly use them. and department heads, however, seem to realize insufficiently that training new people and offering development prospects for their own staff leads to fewer dropouts.”…

The idea that the healthcare sector is struggling with a staff shortage is unjustifiably fast becoming a conventional view. We cannot and should not accept that. There is no shortage of healthcare workers. The problem is that circumstances are created in which the available capacity is not optimally used.

Healthcare professionals currently spend too much time on peripheral matters, leaving too little time for the care of patients and clients. While that is precisely why they ever started working in healthcare.

This means that the outflow in care has increased by 13.4%* compared to last year. 1 in 4 healthcare workers thinks about leaving the organization or even the healthcare sector.

The healthcare professional is overloaded by many peripheral matters; the regulatory burden is increasing and the healthcare professional spends a large part of his time on administrative tasks.

Research by the IZZ Foundation shows that healthcare employees are spending more and more time and energy on compliance with the rules and administrative tasks that result from this.

On average about 40% of their working time. This is at the expense of care for patients and clients. But this also has a major impact on the mental and physical condition of healthcare professionals.

In recent years, we have again seen an increase in the use of psychological care and physiotherapy among healthcare workers.

This increase indicates unhealthy working conditions. And ultimately it is a reason that some healthcare workers leave the sector. Employees have been stretched for a long time.

Healthcare organizations are often inclined to look for the solution in the individual. They focus on individual solutions to increase the resilience of healthcare professionals.

Many organizations are busy adding bones, while the skeleton is crooked. This seriously pollutes the foundation.

We also see at healthcare organizations that HR departments are overflowing with tasks and do not prioritize enough. Stop organizing time-consuming vitality weeks, but take up your role as HR to make working conditions healthier.

Only then will you see effects on absenteeism and turnover. The vitality weeks are ‘nice to have but not urgent.

What is urgent is that HR must also bring more focus into the work. It is no exception that care organizations have about 100 to 150 projects that have to do with HR, health and safety, and vitality. There are far too many.

Go clean up your policy and keep what works. Do not develop a new method for every theme, but make smart choices.

If the dialogue method worked for the theme of informal care, why another method for work pressure? Use the same method for different themes. That saves a lot of time and energy.

There are – unfortunately still far too few – healthcare organizations that have made great strides in working with less regulation and a KISS (keep it simple, stupid) method. Small (self-organizing) teams, facilitated to the maximum by management, and HR, and supported with modern ICT applications.

In this way, administrative processes are limited and the healthcare professional can fully focus on the care of the patient/client.…

The medical council is seized for opinion by the administration, on its initiative, or at your request.

• The doctor presiding over the medical council examines the file. He may entrust the examination to another medical member of the council.
• The doctor in charge of the investigation may call on the expertise of an approved doctor.
• The approved doctor seized for expertise gives a written opinion and can attend the council without taking part in the vote.
• A doctor who is a member of the medical board and intervened on a file as an expert cannot take part in the vote on this file.

When it sits in plenary session, the medical council can have the administration carry out an investigation or an expert report that it deems necessary.

• You have the right to consult your medical file, submit written observations and provide medical certificates.
• You also have the right to be accompanied or represented by a person of your choice at all stages of the procedure.
• You can ask for the doctor of your choice to be heard by the medical council. Your administration too. If it deems it useful, the medical council may ask to hear you.

When your situation is examined by the council in restricted formation, the secretariat of the council informs you of the possible means of contesting the opinion delivered before the higher medical council.

When your situation is examined by the council in plenary formation, the secretariat of the council informs you of your right to be heard by the medical council.

• The opinion of the medical council is reasoned in compliance with medical secrecy.
• It is addressed to you and addressed to your administration.
• Your administration informs the medical council of its decision.
• In the State civil service, a ministerial medical council is set up at each central administration.
• A departmental medical council is also set up with the perfect in each department.

In territorial and in the hospital public service, it is the departmental medical council, placed with the prefect of each department, which is competent.

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