The range of different skills possessed by the members of a group or required for a particular job.
The varied human resources needed to accomplish a clinical task. To provide postoperative care of a cardiac surgery patient, e.g., a surgeon, anesthesiologist, critical care nurses, nursing aides, respiratory therapists, and other personnel must be assembled. A different level of care and a different allocation of health care human resources are needed to provide care to an outpatient with an upper respiratory infection. Assembling the appropriate staffing for health care services is a function that depends on issues such as the demands of the patient’s illness, the specialization and availability of health care providers, the institution in which care is provided, and the available financial resources. In military medicine, a broad array of services is provided by medics; patients with similar injuries and illnesses in urban medical centers would likely have access to a wider variety of professionals, each with a more limited set of skills.