The biggest challenge for the Indian healthcare sector is the shortage of medical personnel. And there is need to forge PPPs to reduce supply gaps in medical personnel in India, said Dr A Malathi, Head Medical Services, Clinical Compliance & Education, Manipal Health Enterprises Pvt. Ltd.

Speaking at a seminar organized by FICCI on ‘Nursing & Allied Health: Collaboration Opportunities between India and the UK’, Dr Malathi said this is evident from the fact that for a population of 1 billion plus, there are just 800 nephrologists, 70 trained vascular surgeons, and 35,000 physiatrists. Worse, the density of specialists is higher in urban areas at 1: 2300 compared with 1: 26,860 in rural areas.

Dr Malathi said there was an urgent need to forge partnerships between the public sector and the private sector in order to reduce the gaps in the supply, needs and demand for human resource and improve the organizational efficiency of public sector facilities. Partnerships, she observed, could be on contractual arrangements or collaborative endeavours between two or more partners.

She said that the need of the hour was to enhance special skills of MBBS doctors. This could be done through a 9- month postgraduate training in a specialty for which there is a lack of providers at the primary care level, such as anaesthesiology, paediatrics, obstetrics/gynaecology and psychiatry.
For the education of nurses, Dr Malathi underlined the need to regulate nursing care standards in private nursing homes through accreditation, renewal of registration of nurses every five years, provision for independent practice by nurses, upgradation of schools of nursing attached to medical college hospitals to impart nursing education of the degree level, one or two refresher courses every year for each nurse, improvement in skill level of nurses with an increase in the ratio of degree- holding nurses vis-à-vis diploma-holding nurses, establishment of a National Institute for Nursing Education Research and Training, management courses for senior positions such as Ward Sisters, Nursing Superintendents prior to promotion and strengthening of the Masters in Nursing Programmes.

Gill Smylie, Business Development Manager, Commercial and International Directorate, Liverpool John Moores University, outlined the current UK Government policy on healthcare which puts patients at the heart of everything the National Health Service (NHS) does. The policy focus is on continuously improving those things that really matter to patients - the outcome of their healthcare and empowering and liberating clinicians to innovate, with the freedom to focus on improving healthcare services.

She said the UK Universities offered Postgraduate Diploma and Masters in areas such as Nursing Management, Nurse Education, Advanced Practitioner, Cancer Nursing, Advanced Midwifery, Disaster relief, International child health and Informatics.

For allied healthcare, MSmylie said that degree and post graduate qualifications could be availed of in areas such as Pharmacy M Pharm, Dentistry BDS, BSc (Hons), Physiotherapy BSc (Hons), Occupational Therapy BSc (Hons), Radiotherapy BSc (Hons), Speech and Language Therapy BSc (Hons), Dietetics BSc (Hons), and Paramedics BSc (Hons).

A panel discussion on areas of collaboration between India and the UK was addressed by Prof. Veronica James, pro vice chancellor, executive dean of Health and Life Science, Glasgow Caledonian University; Dr Rajesh Bhalla, dean-Academics & Student Affairs, IIHMR, Delhi; Prof. Dr Lorraine Ellis, assistant dean & Head of School of Health, University of Derby; Dr Arati Verma, vice president, Health Sciences Education Initiatives, Max Healthcare; and Dr Shirley Bach, Head of School of Nursing & Midwifery, University of Brighton.