Introduction
The work of healthcare specialists is complicated by various factors related to their efficiency in the workplace and the perception of them among patients and other workers. Therefore, medical facilities tend to develop policies addressing specific issues to improve their work as a whole. Their efforts have been proved to be successful in terms of finding solutions (Alrahbi et al., 2019). However, it is still critical to consider specific problems related to the field as a whole rather than the hospital setting. For the purposes of this paper, such issues are the presence of gender bias in healthcare and the adoption of technology by staff.
Gender Bias and Policies Against it
The first problem is typical for women who chose a career in the field of healthcare and faced a biased attitude based on their gender. This circumstance negatively affected their performance at work since they were not provided with the necessary equipment and tools as their male colleagues, and their requests and complaints were not taken seriously (Huber, 2020). The significance of this problem is also explained by the fact that women of higher positions, such as surgeons, suffered from this type of bias more often than nursing personnel (Pinn, 2018). From this point of view, it is critical to take action to prevent the extension of the issue and eliminate it over time.
Unfortunately, the situation with gender bias in healthcare is not improving. The government’s politics regarding this issue is related to protecting this population group by establishing medical facilities standards, but they do not seem efficient (Pinn, 2018). The activists against harassment and bias in medicine also proposed a set of actions to take in the future, and they include the provision of emotional support and advice and the change in the mechanism of hiring new employees (Huber, 2020). Nevertheless, these ideas have not been put into practice even though they are frequently discussed by specialists.
Slow Adoption of Technologies and Methods to Improve it
The second problem that medical staff faces is the need for hospitals to adopt new technologies. It is emphasized by numerous studies, which also mention the unwillingness of healthcare professionals to engage in the process (AL-Hadban et al., 2017). The reason for such resistance is the absence of motivation to study new approaches and methods due to the lack of understanding of their usefulness (AL-Hadban et al., 2017). However, this issue is less severe than the situation with gender bias, and it is efficiently addressed by the government.
The politics of the US are oriented on the provision of benefits to healthcare workers who assist in the initiatives on the adoption of technology in the field. Thus, for example, they include financial incentives to physicians that encourage them to learn new methods of collecting and keeping electronic data (Alrahbi et al., 2019). These measures are complemented by the policies of hospitals aimed at motivating their employees (Alrahbi et al., 2019). In this way, the problem is appropriately addressed by both the government and medical facilities.
Conclusion
To sum up, the issues under consideration, gender bias among healthcare specialists and their unwillingness to adopt new technology, are critical for the field. The main difference between them is in the fact that the latter is targeted by the US government and hospitals, whereas the former remains unsolved. In this way, it can be concluded that the problems of medical professionals can be divided into the issues that are being resolved and the aspects that are neglected by the facilities.
References
AL-Hadban, W. K. M., Yusof, S. A. M., & Hashim, K. F. (2017). The barriers and facilitators to the adoption of new technologies in the public healthcare sector: a qualitative investigation. International Journal of Business and Management, 12(1), 159-168.
Alrahbi, D., Khan, M., & Hussain, M. (2019). Exploring the motivators of technology adoption in healthcare. International Journal of Healthcare Management, 1-14.
Huber, J. (2020). Identifying and addressing gender bias in health care. Stanford Medicine.
Pinn, V. W. (2019). Gender bias: An undesirable challenge in health professions and health care. In M. Martin, S. Heron, L. Moreno-Walton, & M. Strickland (Eds.), Diversity and inclusion in quality patient care (pp. 23-36). Springer.