Search

Radiology is one of the fastest developing areas of modern medicine, in which technological progress, increased number of radiological studies and their growing complexity and scope require strategic demand and supply planning of the human resource. The key goal of the supply planning of radiographers is to ensure that Lithuanian health care institutions employ the required number of such specialists, which would guarantee that the popu¬lation’s needs for adequate radiological services are met. While planning the need for Rs, the present supply is explored in order to determine how many of these professionals will be needed in the future and what factors will lead to their shortage or surplus. Higher education studies for radiographers, which in Lithuania were launched in 2013 will have an impact on the specialist supply over the next two decades. Due to the different periods of studies, it will be difficult to ensure the radiographers’ balance in the labour market; it is also likely that the changes in vocational training will influence specialists in the labour market. For this reason, the aim of our work was to plan the demand and supply of radiographers in Lithuanian health care institutions until 2030 and to evaluate the professional competence in the present labour market from radiographers’ and radiologists’ point of view. We applied needs-based method, that assesses the population’s use of radiographers’ services by age and gender – which has not been applied before. The study of radiographers’ competence by employing a questionnaire prepared by Swedish researchers allowed for the first time in Lithuania to assess the professional competence of radiographers.

Over the last two decades, a number of studies have been conducted on the planning of human resources in various professional qualifications of the healthcare sector in various parts of the world. The studies evaluated the supply and demand (as well as factors affecting them) of human resources in healthcare, yet no studies have been conducted in Lithuania on the planning of the number of radiographers as human resources in the healthcare system. The aim of this study was to estimate the prospective number of students accepted for studies in radiography up to 2030 in order to satisfy the need for these specialists in the labor market. Methods. The prognostication of the number of students accepted for studies in radiography is part of a more extensive study “The Prognosis of the Supply and Demand for Radiographers in Lithuania for 2012 – 2030”, where the supply and demand for those specialists were prognosticated according to two scenarios – the mean and the prospective ones [20]. In this study, we evaluated and compared the most likely prognoses of the supply and demand for radiographers according to the prospective scenario, and prognosticated the required number of entrants until the year 2030 to satisfy the demand for these specialists in the labor market. Results. The evaluation of the prospective scenario of the supply and demand for radiographers until the year 2030 showed a gap between the supply and demand for these specialists, which is likely to increase from 2016-2017 on. In 2020, the shortage was predicted to be 0.13 position per 10,000 population, and in 2030 – 0.37 position per 10,000 population. To avoid the predicted shortage of these specialists and to meet the need for them in the prospective scenario, the number of students accepted for studies of radiography should be increased by nearly one-fourth, compared to the current numbers. Conclusions. To meet the prognosticated demand for radiography specialists according to the prospective scenario (which is most likely), the yearly number of entrants should be increased by up to 30% during the period of 2013-2026.