Recently, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the National Medical Security Administration jointly formulated the national occupational standards for health care workers (long-term care workers) and promulgated them.
The person in charge of the Department of Pharmaceutical Management of the National Health Insurance Administration said that long-term care nurses are a new occupational type of work set up by the National Health Insurance Administration with the support of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in order to steadily promote the construction of the long-term care insurance system. China's long-term care insurance system was launched in 2016, and the scope of pilot cities will be expanded in 2020, and at present, 49 pilot cities across the country have insurance coverage of about 1800 million people, a total of more than 2.35 million people enjoy treatment, the cumulative expenditure exceeds 72 billion yuan, and there are about 8,000 designated nursing institutions providing services, with nearly 300,000 nursing staff. However, at the same time, it should be noted that there are more than 42 million disabled elderly people over the age of 60 in China, and the supply of professional and high-quality nursing service personnel is seriously insufficient, which has become an important constraint on the sustainable development of the long-term care insurance system. In order to accelerate the training of more professional, professional and standardized full-time long-term care insurance service personnel, solve the problem of long-term care insurance system development from the supply side, and improve the quality of long-term care services, the National Health Insurance Administration initiated an application, and after the review of industry experts, the newly revised National Occupational Classification Dictionary has set up a new occupational type of long-term care nurse.
Long-term care specialists are established to adapt to the development of the long-term care system, and refer to practitioners who use basic life care and nursing knowledge and skills to provide basic life care and closely related medical care, functional maintenance, psychological care and other services for people enjoying long-term care insurance benefits in families, communities, elderly care institutions, medical institutions and other places. According to the assessment and grading of the degree of loss of ability in daily living activities, cognition, perception and communication of disabled persons by professional assessment institutions and the corresponding service project recommendations, professional, skilled, and standardized nursing services are provided. The establishment of long-term care professionals is of great significance for accelerating the training of a large number of high-quality long-term care service practitioners and promoting the construction of a long-term care insurance system.
Long-term care insurance provides services to long-term disabled persons who have reached a certain standard of disability assessment, and the particularity of the service recipient determines the particularity of the skill requirements and knowledge of the service provider. The skills of long-term care workers overlap with other occupations such as medical care workers, elderly care workers, and domestic helpers, but there are obvious differences in terms of work objects, work content, service standards, and ability requirements. Long-term disabled people have completely or partially lost their ability to live, which may be accompanied by swallowing dysfunction, speech disorder, movement disorder and other life difficulties, and most of them will be accompanied by chronic diseases. Therefore, long-term care workers need to have the ability to provide basic life care for the disabled and assist them to live a "decent" life. It is necessary to have basic medical care knowledge, be able to detect problems in a timely manner and take emergency measures to help the disabled live a "safe" life; It is necessary to have good moral literacy to assist the disabled to live a "dignified" life; In addition, it is necessary to know the basic knowledge of long-term care insurance, provide services as required, and ensure the quality of service. It can be said that a long-term care professional is a compound human resource who integrates professional knowledge and skills such as life care, medical care, health management, and long-term care insurance.
According to the newly promulgated national professional standards for long-term care workers, long-term care professionals are divided into three levels: primary (level 5), intermediate (level 4), and senior (**). The skill requirements and related knowledge requirements are progressive, with the higher level covering the lower level requirements. The professional functions of primary nurses are divided into four parts: life care, basic nursing, emergency response, and functional maintenance. Intermediate nurses are divided into five parts: life care, basic nursing, symptomatic nursing, functional maintenance, and psychological nursing. Senior nurses are divided into four parts: basic nursing, disease nursing, functional maintenance, and psychological nursing. Anyone over the age of 16 who is interested in long-term care can apply, and there are no gender or educational requirements. At the same time, relevant occupations can apply for the professional recognition of long-term care professionals of the corresponding level after passing the standardized training.
The promulgation of the new professional standards has taken the first step towards the construction of long-term care practitioners. Next, the National Health Insurance Administration, together with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and other relevant departments, will organize local medical insurance bureaus and experts to carry out relevant work from three aspects: First, strengthen training, organize and carry out the development of training outlines for long-term care practitioners, clarify training objectives, training hours, training content, skill appraisal and other related content, build a standardized training platform, improve the evaluation system, and organize and standardize the work of training evaluation, grade recognition and certificate issuance. The second is to strengthen publicity and improve the social recognition of long-term care workers. Through publicity and skill competitions, more people are attracted to engage in long-term care. The third is to strengthen training, improve professional construction, innovate training models, guide relevant colleges and universities to explore apprenticeship training and other models, promote the integration of industry and education, the combination of engineering and learning to cultivate high-quality long-term care skilled talents, and expand the supply of talents through education and training.