Health Care Workforce
Maggie Butterfield

My journey into health care has taken many different paths. I am a director of a large family support entity. I am an early fifty woman who in the world of health care employees, I am not unusual. Health care is comprised of over 70% women. The health care workforce is aging as the economic view of our communities continues to be challenged. Many people similar to me have thought of retiring, retired and returned or are frightened at the prospect of retiring, due to the economy and often times due to a loss of a sense of purpose. My experience has totaled 27 years with the same organization, watching as it has grown, and being allowed to grow right along with it. I have a varied background of early childhood education, therapeutic intervention for hospitalized children, parent education, adult learning and leadership development. I relate to this environment, as it is the culture in many ways of which I have grown up since my early twenties.

I am this workforce in many ways and my experience as an educator, as a learner, as a leader and as a parent has all contributed to a greater understanding of what the employees of today and the future need to do to continue to build a greater health care environment of the future. Critical to the success of health care is the continued efforts of science to better understand how to successfully cure those that it can, and to successfully heal to the best of their ability those they cannot cure. Innate to this clinical greatness is an understanding of people, where they are in their lives and what impact their healthcare situation is thrusting upon them. Relevant to that is the impact not only on them, but their family and the family’s ability to survive. Every member plays an important part of the healing and wholeness. Health care workers of today and the future need to understand this, work collaboratively with all who can make a difference and to create the choreography of healing for each and every patient they may work with. The world of health care is about the strategic alignment of skills and to come together to play their part in the healing of one individual, in the prevention of long term health issues, in the provision of key resources to live an sustain within a community and in the overall wellness of people.

There are many players in the world of health care. I am not of the belief that more is better, what is better is a rich wealth of skills that can come together to make a difference in the health of another. The world of health care in the future will have to be diverse in the creation of how many, and the skill basket needed for success. One obviously is not enough…1000 not working together is not acceptable. A health care workforce of the future will need to play upon the complimentary skills of each other to make a difference. That is how we decide how many.