Healthcare Workforce Performance in Hospitals: Challenges, Skills, and Quality of Patient Care

Abstract

Healthcare workforce performance is a decisive factor in hospital effectiveness, patient safety, and the overall quality of care. Hospitals depend on a diverse mix of professionals—physicians, nurses, pharmacists, allied health staff, technicians, and support services—whose day-to-day decisions and behaviors determine whether care is safe, timely, efficient, and patient-centered. Yet hospitals worldwide face persistent pressures including workforce shortages, rising workloads, burnout, evolving clinical complexity, and rapid technological change. This paper examines healthcare workforce performance in hospital settings by reviewing key challenges that undermine performance, essential skills and competencies that support high performance, and pathways through which workforce factors shape patient outcomes and patient experience. It also synthesizes evidence-informed strategies for strengthening workforce performance, including staffing optimization, competency-based training, teamwork and communication systems, supportive leadership, and interventions to protect staff well-being. The paper concludes that sustained investment in the healthcare workforce is a core quality and safety strategy and a prerequisite for resilient, high-performing hospitals.