The Healthcare Leader Development Association of Thailand (HealDAT) was inaugurated last week with the objective of assisting the development of leaders for the local healthcare sector. The Nation's Pichaya Changsorn asked the association's president, Professor Apichati Sivayathorn, about his mission and agenda.
-What are the objectives and goals of HealDAT?
People with a lot of experience in the healthcare sector know well that requirements, especially in the area of management, have become much more sophisticated and there are many changes rapidly taking place due to factors including demographic changes that lead to more diseases, and technologies. And the most critical thing is people, because healthcare requires a lot of human resources. Although you may have robots and equipment, eventually you will need doctors to diagnose patients' ailments, nurses to take care of them, nutritionists to supervise meals, and so on.
At the same time, people's well-being has improved. They have choices and buying power. In the past, the attitude was that people came to hospitals seeking help. Now, they come to purchase services. They have higher expectations. Hence, people who work in the healthcare sector have to adjust themselves to cope with these changes.
Healthcare personnel normally have to work hard and make sacrifices. But if they can't adjust themselves in time with the change, they will be demoralised. Many of them are very idealistic at the beginning, but after a while they become exhausted, despite the devotion of all of their energy. Some may have done very well, and taken good care of their patients for the past 10 to 20 years, but suddenly, they make one mistake. They might be subject to a complaint. Although some errors may stem from carelessness or negligence, research has found that the cause is usually the inferiority of the hospital's system that should have helped to prevent the error, [after the physicians] have already shouldered a lot of burden.
It has become a very big issue, especially for the managers of hospitals: how to make sure doctors and nurses feel satisfied with their work while at the same time fulfilling the needs of patients.
So, executives or the leaders themselves also have to be developed. Leaders not only means top executives, but also physicians, the chiefs of hospital wards, and heads at all levels.
-What will be your area of focus?
We will emphasise working knowledge. The concept is to pool knowledge and share it in various forms. We will try to avoid conventional methods, such as one-way communication and teaching. For example, to learn about infection control in intensive care units, you have to bring in people who really work in ICUs to come to talk. We plan to create an "expert yellow pages".
The association will be a central venue for various professionals in the healthcare sector including physicians, nurses, pharmacists and others. The centre of their focus will be on the patients.