28 Jul 2021
Since India’s independence, the Indian healthcare industry has grown at a tremendous pace owing to its strengthening coverage, services and increasing expenditure by public as well as private players. The emergence of telemedicine in the past few years and Government initiatives like e-health coupled with tax benefits and incentives are driving the healthcare market in India. Despite this growth, it has proven insufficient to deliver adequate and quality healthcare facilities to the entire population. Furthermore, the pandemic has demonstrated the challenges in terms of inadequate availability of medical infrastructure and equipment as well as lack of trained healthcare workers, both in rural and urban India.
The current system of health care / medical education in India has not been able to keep up with the increased demand for healthcare professionals across the country. A study by the Public Health Foundation of India in 2012 stated that India faced a shortage of 1.27 lakh optometrists and ophthalmologists, 8.5 lakh anaesthetists, 61,000 medical laboratory technicians, 18 lakh rehabilitation specialists, 7400 speech-language specialists and audiologists, 19,000 radiographers and about 2.3 lakh medical technology workers. At present, we require 90 lakh paramedical professionals to cater to the increasing need in the health sector. There is dearth of such trained professionals, which can only be compensated with increased world-class training and education in paramedical sciences. To drive the healthcare sector, there is a huge requirement of support staff such as general duty assistants, medical & lab technicians, phlebotomist, basic emergency medical technicians etc.
Realizing this critical gap in availability of trained healthcare professionals, CII in partnership with the industry has been providing crucial skill and reskill training to the youth and healthcare workers.
During the pandemic, CII conducted basic life support online training programmes for the Anganwadi community health workers in Goa.
CII, in partnership with GE Healthcare, conducted reskill training for healthcare and para-healthcare professional, along with their assessment and certification.
CII is conducting employment linked skill training in healthcare domain in Bihar to mitigate the shortage of healthcare workers and provide employment opportunities to the youth.
It is providing 100% employment linked healthcare resource training along with crucial industry exposure to the youth, with particular emphasis on women candidates.
CII is offering training courses specific to the industry i.e. for Phlebotomy Technician, Emergency Medical Technician etc.
These courses help build capacities of the youth and are also instrumental in providing livelihood to those seeking employment locally. The industry-aligned courses include classroom sessions as well as On The Job training (OTJ) which adds considerable value to a candidate’s credentials and increases their prospects and potential. Moreover, the trainees are given stipend during their OTJ. CII is carrying out the engagement in three broad steps:
Step 1: Demand Consolidation
Reaching out to hospital, diagnostic clinic and other healthcare providers for various job roles
Collation of extensive suite of jobs and wide variety of job roles
This is followed by pre-selection of candidates by employers
Step 2: Mobilization and Selection of Candidates
Creating awareness, branding and mobilization of candidates through a team composed of domain expert
Organizing outreach through camps, road shows, social and traditional media, banners, posters etc.
Digital registration of the candidates
Leveraging CII-Model Career Centres (MCCs) for counselling of the youth
Step 3: Training and Deployment
Classroom and OTJ training
Weekly monitoring and periodic assessment for quality check
Final assessment after course completion by Third Party
Certification by Third Party and CII
Leveraging MCC for deployment of the candidates
CII is planning to scale up the training of healthcare technicians with industry participation across 8 centres in Rajasthan, Goa, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand. The skill development programme will offer 6 courses, which will include courses on medical equipment technology assistant, telehealth services coordinator and hospital front desk coordinator. Through this endeavour, CII aims to train more than 8000 youth in the coming year.
The article first appeared in the June 2021 issue of the CII Communique. Click here to read the full issue.