Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 63
8
Perspectives from Stakeholders
In the final formal set of presentations of the workshop, four repre-
sentatives of national organizations provided differing perspectives on the
future of allied health.
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF ALLIED HEALTH
Allan Johnson, associate dean of the Division of Allied Health Sci-
ences in the College of Pharmacy, Nursing, and Allied Health Sciences at
Howard University and a professor in the Department of Nutritional Sci-
ences, provided a perspective from the National Society of Allied Health
(NSAH), which is a membership organization of historically black colleges
and universities with programs in allied health. The NSAH’s major goal is
to improve the health status of African Americans and other economically
disadvantaged groups through research, education, employment, and com-
munity services.
Johnson cited three obstacles that face the field of allied health. First,
it lacks a cohesive identity. This is partly because of the large number of
allied health professions, but it also has not succeeded in conveying to
other health care workers and to the public knowledge of the roles of allied
health professions. The wide variety of program names for these fields in
educational institutions is an indication of this problem.
The name allied health is also a problem, Johnson admitted. The im-
pression it can convey is that allied health professionals are not really health
professionals rather, they are just “allied” to health professionals. Allied
health professionals sometimes engage in counterproductive turf battles,
63
OCR for page 64
64 ALLIED HEALTH WORKFORCE AND SERVICES
Johnson said. As examples, he cited tensions between physician assistants
and nurses, between occupational therapists and physical therapists, and
between certified diabetes educators and registered dieticians.
Finally, many allied health professions lack diversity. Yet minority
health professionals provide the majority of health care to the poor and
underserved. Diversity provides for greater access to care, greater patient
choice and satisfaction, and better educational opportunities for health
profession students, Johnson said.
To have a greater influence on health policy, the allied health profes-
sions need to develop a brand identity, Johnson concluded. There needs
to be an atmosphere of respect and appreciation for the roles of allied
health professionals among policy makers, the general public, other health
professionals, and allied health professionals. Position papers on the im-
pacts of new policies, testimony at congressional hearings, and a lobbying
organization for allied health could all promote the causes of cohesion and
advancement.
THE NATIONAL NETWORK OF HEALTH CAREER
PROGRAMS IN TWO-YEAR COLLEGES
Many of the messages heard at the workshop resonate with the goals
of the National Network of Health Career Programs in Two-Year Colleges,
said Carolyn O’Daniel, dean of Allied Health and Nursing at Jefferson
Community and Technical College in Louisville, Kentucky, and president of
the network. Examples include the emphases on team-based care, chronic
care, increased accountability, career pathways, and work-based learning.
Many of the barriers discussed at the workshop also are of particular con-
cern to community colleges, including scope-of-practice silos, definitions of
professionalism, and the difficulty of identifying the optimal mix of health
practitioners.
A unifying strategy, she said, would be the implementation of a core
health care curriculum. An interdisciplinary core curriculum could stream-
line educational processes, improve efficiencies, promote teamwork, and
prepare students for changing workforce demands. Similarly, effective part-
nerships and coalitions among educational institutions not only leverage
resources but improve planning.
Career pathways offer the best hope for meeting the needs for various
levels of care in a variety of settings, said O’Daniel. Community colleges
need to work with partners at both the front end and the back end to create
seamless articulation and transparent pathways. Also, work-based learning
can increase diversity, promote job satisfaction, improve retention, and
decrease costs, all of which will be necessary in the future.
Accountability measures for programs receiving public funds must be
OCR for page 65
65
PERSPECTIVES FROM STAKEHOLDERS
extended if students are to be protected and if those funds are to produce
the needed outcomes, said O’Daniel. In addition, interdisciplinary team-
work must be modeled by faculty and incorporated into programs, and
clinical practice must include more than just acute care settings.
A unified voice that can promote recognition and influence policy
requires valid and timely data. Also, job forecasting requires complex
environmental scanning capabilities. Employers must be at the table and
willing to share data.
Community colleges are critical partners in health care workforce
preparation and particularly in establishing and enabling career pathways,
O’Daniel concluded. In the process, they diversify health care, promote
economic development, and improve the lives of their students.
THE ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOLS OF
ALLIED HEALTH PROFESSIONS
Richard Oliver, dean of the School of Health Professions at the Univer-
sity of Missouri and chair of the Government Relations Committee for the
Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions, made 18 points about
the barriers and opportunities facing allied health.
1. State practice acts are wildly inconsistent and need to be reconciled.
2. Accreditation standards need to be driven by outcomes.
3. The current lack of diversity constitutes a crisis in public health.
4. Reimbursement needs to create incentives for team-based care, and
education programs should create the skills to work on teams.
5. Inadequate health literacy among patients is a problem that extends
across all health professions and must be addressed in part through
what Oliver described as “stupid stuff,” like calling patients after
an appointment to make sure that they understood what was said,
have filled a prescription, and have made another appointment.
6. Technology has the potential to transform both higher education
and medicine, from courses delivered by cell phone to virtual physi-
cians and professors.
7. The lack of doctorate-trained faculty in allied health is a major
problem, especially in areas where related disciplines cannot fill
vacancies.
8. Continual turf battles detract from the need to generate more pri-
mary care practitioners than there currently is capacity to generate.
9. Emerging professions, many created by new technologies, are a
tremendous opportunity for students, both those in specialized
programs and those in general health science bachelor’s programs.
OCR for page 66
66 ALLIED HEALTH WORKFORCE AND SERVICES
10. Change needs to occur at a much faster speed than is typically
found in higher education to accommodate the pace of change in
modern society.
11. The tendency for proprietary schools to pay for clinical training
experiences is driving other students out of clinical sites.
12. Partnerships with community colleges need to extend beyond ar-
ticulation agreements to genuine partnerships.
13. The extension of the electronic health record to the personal health
record controlled by the consumer is an exciting area of growth.
14. The things industry expects of people with advanced degrees can
differ from the skills developed in getting those degrees.
15. Career ladders need to become more transparent, more seamless,
and easier to navigate.
16. Institutions need to identify needs and then develop programs to
meet those needs.
17. Allied health professionals need to be more vigilant and vocal to
avoid being like copilots who passively watch pilots fly planes into
mountains.
18. Outcomes research, such as could be generated through a postacute
care registry, could produce great efficiencies.
THE HEALTH PROFESSIONS NETWORK
The Health Professions Network, formed in 1995, comprises national
leaders from allied health professional associations, all levels of educa-
tional institutions, accrediting agencies, and health care professionals with
representation from each of the 50 states. The organization has two major
goals, said its president, Lynn Brooks. It seeks to market careers in allied
health, and it wants to address the barriers to advancement of allied health
workers.
In part through biannual meetings of a very wide variety of allied
health professionals, it has sought to institute an interdisciplinary dialogue
to look for common ground in allied health. “We did not want to focus on
the differences. We wanted to focus on what we could do to pull everything
together,” said Brooks.
The network also has increased its efforts to market health careers.
“We do not want allied health to be the default job. We want it to be the
first pick.” Drawing inspiration from the Discover Nursing campaign sup-
ported by Johnson & Johnson, the network developed a program to refine
its message, in part through focus groups that could identify perceptions
of health careers. Seeking to brand allied health and articulate it as an in-
dustry, it outlined press releases, media training, talking points, brochures,
presentations, a website, and other materials. However, the recession of
OCR for page 67
67
PERSPECTIVES FROM STAKEHOLDERS
2008 made it difficult to find financing for the campaign. Instead, it began
building a partnership that could take the marketing program nationwide.
These partners, in turn, have many of the resources and capabilities called
for in the promotional campaign.
In the process of developing the campaign, the Health Professionals
Network was able to reidentify and specify many of the long-range barri-
ers and opportunities that are factors in allied health, such as educational
staffing and resources, recruitment and retention, the provision of accurate
and timely data, economic support, the uneven distribution of workers
and needs, inadequate diversity, and developing “clout” for allied health.
To address these barriers and opportunities, the network is putting on a
series of webinars, summits, and conferences. It also is collaborating with
the Department of Labor to create a competency model for the different
areas of allied health.
“We have the greatest industry going in the country,” said Brooks. “We
are hot. We have been for years. Our salaries, benefits, and opportunities
are good. But our problems are immense, and we are not working through
them as fast as we could.” The Health Professionals Network is commit-
ted to overcoming these barriers, Brooks concluded. “We do not want the
future to create us. We need to create the future.”
DISCUSSION
During the discussion period, Johnson said that minority students need
to know more about allied health. “Most of these students are interested
in medicine, and sometimes dentistry. So I have to alert them to the fact
that there are other health professions.” Students also need better prepara-
tion in mathematics and the sciences to start taking college-level classes
immediately.
In response to a question about why there has been so much reluctance
among baccalaureate programs to accept credits from community colleges,
O’Daniel said that community colleges have been working on this issue
for many years, though success has been limited. In the state of Kentucky,
she said, a recent initiative brought together 2-year and 4-year institutions
to develop an articulation program. “We had statewide buy in for it. So I
know it can be done.”
Oliver, in answering a question about collaborations between universi-
ties and community colleges, pointed to the importance of trust. He also
described how gratifying it is to see allied health programs in community
colleges transform the lives of students, many of whom are from nontradi-
tional backgrounds.
OCR for page 68
