Health care providers like any other service provider need to be endowed with the adequate skill and knowledge in order to ably dispense their duties. Further to the aforesaid in order to apply themselves adequately, health care providers need to have a certain level of confidence in their own services before administering them on the unsuspecting public.
Health Confidence is a measurement of your ability to understand, manage and control most health problems with little to no anxiety or anger.
Those with high confidence may still have many health concerns, but they generally feel they are getting good information, have good support, and know how to access the healthcare system when needed in a meaningful way. Those with lower degrees of confidence tend to be “not so sure” may have poor access to care, or may find that the quality of information they receive could be better. It’s also important to understand what Health Confidence is not. Health confidence is not about gimmicks or quick fixes. It is an ‘inside-out’ approach with decades of proven results from thousands of people.
In study Indonesia, midwives with higher self-efficacy were more likely to perform resuscitation attempts. In the United States, confident physicians were more likely to adequately prescribe lipid-lowering medication to treat high cholesterol. In addition, provider confidence contributes to job satisfaction and provider motivation which in turn, may be linked to how long the healthcare provider will remain in their current position.
According to Kim, M.K 2020 of healthcare providers’ confidence in their clinical skills to deliver quality obstetric and care in Uganda and Zambia. BMC health services concluded that the positive association between scope of practice and confidence reveals that exposure to a variety of patients and tasks is an important contributor of provider confidence. This finding has implications for improving provider competence especially in rural clinics where patient volumes may be low. Although not directly linked to scope of practice, other studies have found a similar association between patient volumes and provider confidence.
The manifestation of health care confidence is heavily placed on the health care receiver. This means to say people who seek health care services must believe in the mechanisms and personnel who administer the service before any medication or medical processes.
Having established the psychological nexus between healthcare confidence and the wellbeing of individuals, the government must boost healthcare confidence especially in members of the public by deliberate publicity of health care services and where specialised healthcare services can be received. Further the healthcare personnel on the other hand must have a system allowing them general opportunity to be exposed to various medical problems especially in their formative years as either doctors or nurses. In Zambia, this can be done through the various medical schools and relevant medical associations.
According to the World Health Organisation, health and personal well being is centripetal to development and the agenda of alleviating poverty. A citizen defeated mentally before accessing a health service or one caged by the thought that his or her health care system is flawed or incapable of meeting their health needs cannot be effective in any way.
Commenting on the Health Sector and funding, the United Nations through their 2019 brief commented on the aspect of having only 9.3 percent allocation of the budget towards the health sector, which percentage falls below the 12 percent target. There is therefore need for the Zambian Government to consider this aspect carefully and confer the health sector with the much needed allocation, this will help in the securing of medical facilities and medicines in general, thereby increasing the public confidence of Zambians in their medical systems and services.
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