Digital Soft Skills of Healthcare Workforce - Identification, Prioritization and Digital Training

Digital technologies are increasingly embedded into healthcare aiming to improve quality of patient care, enhance patients' safety and cut down economical costs. Healthcare professionals' digital skills are indeed need enhancement with policies and initiatives have started working towards that, but digital soft skills are underplayed. Digital soft skills will be investable needed in the future healthcare workforce to enable transformation of health. Thus, this paper identifies and prioritizes digital soft skills for healthcare workforce based on 32 healthcare professionals, training providers and technology providers. From the analysis of the data collected by the interviews, it has become very clear that digital skills/competences can only be effectively put in practice in the Health and Care sector, if the following essential soft skills are enhanced: Communication, Open Mindedness, Positive Attitude, Critical Thinking and Empathy. This work also discuss potential training through role playing both as a face-to-face or as part of an immersive learning experience.