Abstract
Career service in cross-cultural healthcare mission work is the ambition of many people around the world. However, premature termination of this expected long-term service mitigates against achieving the goals of the individual and the organization. The lingering challenge of high rates of missionary attrition impacts the long-term effectiveness of the work and the health and well-being of the workers. One of the keys to reducing premature attrition is cross-cultural training for these individuals, provided it offers the right content, through the best medium, at the time of greatest perceived need by the missionary. This paper applies the Dreyfus Model of skills acquisition to the process of mentoring career healthcare missionaries in a progressive manner, utilizing a mentoring method. These missionaries can flourish in their work and more effectively achieve their individual and organizational goals through strategic mentorship that clearly defines a pathway for growing their cross-cultural skills.
Highlights
It is estimated that there are 400,000 cross-cultural Christian missionaries serving around the world, 127,000 of them from the United States and 42,000 of them serving four or more years.[1,2] Healthcare professionals are a part of this workforce
At the CMDA Medical Missions Summit in Atlanta in 2012, it was determined that 6.4% of the missionaries in the eight organizations attending were involved in healthcare.[5]
Of the 66 organizations studied in the Global Healthcare Workers Needs Assessment (GHWNA) study in 2013, 24% of new missionary candidates were healthcare workers.[6]
Summary
It is estimated that there are 400,000 cross-cultural Christian missionaries serving around the world, 127,000 of them from the United States and 42,000 of them serving four or more years.[1,2] Healthcare professionals are a part of this workforce. As will be explained below, training of healthcare missionaries through mentoring, coaching, and teaching after they begin their work on the field may better fit current needs It will allow for a guided, progressive process of finding a role for the missionary that has meaning and value and, increases role satisfaction.[37,38,39] This means making the development of people an integral part of organizational culture, not an activity to be inserted into the organization.[40,41]. Common sources of real-time training are face-to-face or internet-based interactions with other expatriate workers, repatriates, or local nationals Materials provided by their organization can be helpful as an asynchronous learning tool.[24] Eschbach, Parker, and Stoeberl argue that highrigor CCT, beginning during the pre-departure phase and continuing intermittently through-out the posting, is the most effective type of delivery.[42] Effective CCT teaches expatriates how to process the many new experiences they are having.[35].
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