The healthcare workforce as a public health concern: Courageous voices from the field
Healthcare is seeing more bold, well-informed authors and podcasters speaking out about what's wrong with the healthcare workforce pipeline and ways to fix it
TGI Friday.
Today we’re looking a little deeper at an article whose numbers on projected nurse shortages are mind-boggling. The research offers an in-depth statistical analysis of nurses’ responses to a survey, from the Journal of Nursing Regulation.
(Who among us predicted we’d be discussing a statistical analysis from a research journal today? Don’t worry, in this newsletter, we stick to the “Friday energy” version, distilled and translated into plain English.)
Also in this issue:
A public health perspective on workforce shortages in healthcare has not yet been widely considered by policymakers, and it needs to be — like, yesterday — says the Public Health Podcast and Media Network newsletter.
The Public Health Workforce is Not OK newsletter writer Dr. Katie Schenk, a leading voice on matters of recruiting, hiring, and staffing in healthcare (particularly in public health), has been *getting real* about the broken, misguided, and/or toxic practices she’s encountered while seeking her next full-time role.
The CEO of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, in a new article sounding the alarm about dire staffing projections in his state, offers a digestible-and-exhaustive list of policy, recruiting, hiring, and training recommendations that I’d love to stick on the fridge of every lawmaker and every healthcare CEO in the country. (Just sayin’.)
100K Left During COVID; 800K More Will Leave Nursing Soon
I recently ran across a LinkedIn post from healthcare writer and consultant Melissa Mills, who added some ideas as she shared an in-depth statistical analysis of nurses’ survey responses, published in the Journal of Nursing Regulation.
While the numbers in the research aren’t exactly new, they boost the credibility — and the gravity — of the many alarming nurse-shortage surveys we’ve been hearing about the last few years.
“Nearly 100,000 registered nurses were estimated to have left the field during the COVID-19 pandemic and almost 800,000 intend to follow them out by 2027, according to a survey analysis by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing.
“Responses to the poll of more than 50,000 nurses suggest a net nursing workforce decline of 3.3% in the past two years, and a 2.7% decline in registered nurses specifically, according to data published in the Journal of Nursing Regulation.”
To sum up: RNs with less than 10 years in the field are done. RNs with decades of experience are done. Support nurses are done. They are leaving their healthcare jobs faster than anyone could possibly replace them.
Check out the full research paper here.
A few quotes from nurses responding to the survey, from the report:
“During COVID-19, homecare nursing was never addressed as a high risk job. Paramedics, hospital staff, and other essential workers seem to get addressed and considered for vaccines but I was told by my physician that I was not eligible for the vaccine when it came out. It was and still is like playing Russian roulette going into patients’ homes, not knowing if they have been exposed or not. PPE equipment was not always available, and every assisted living facility had different rules for homecare to follow.”
“The amount of extra work I have been required to perform at work without financial compensation is outstanding. My working environment is unsafe for both staffing and lack of security. There have been many times I thought I was in danger or a patient was in danger. These situations have led to me having anxiety and even full-blown panic attacks every morning when I clock in. I am terrified for my own safety, as well as for the patients I see every day.”
Nurses be like:
… and who can blame them? Not I.
Healthcare Workforce as a Public Health Concern
Elsewhere on the Substack platform, I’ve enjoyed following the Public Health Podcast and Media Network newsletter.
Yesterday’s issue touches on why everyone should care about healthcare workforce development:
“Who knew that we’d be facing job losses across several sectors and would see a continued pandemic. Especially in public health, we are in an employer’s market where they can specify their most desired qualifications and receive an overabundance of applications.
“The need to address workforce development, the need to address burnout and the need for worker quality of life (prolonged stress, remaining in abusive conditions, the racial and gender wage gap, lack of diversity in leadership, etc.) have not yet been fully explored from a public health perspective.”
Read the whole thing and subscribe at PHPN.substack.com.
An eye-opening and bold voice on healthcare hiring and public health matters is Dr. Katie Schenk, a Ph.D. public health scientist and epidemiologist behind The Public Health Workforce is Not OK on Substack. Highly recommend.
A refreshingly authentic take on health topics, Dr. Schenk recently laid bare the broken technology and toxic “norms” that are crippling the hiring processes of our healthcare system, and she boldly demands that healthcare employers do better.
“Even the initial stages of a job application can be unnecessarily demanding, when applicants are often asked to manually enter all of their biographical information and employment history into a format convenient for the employer, no matter that this is entirely duplicative of the exact same information already submitted in their resume.
“Salaries and benefits are rarely quoted in job advertisements, which can lead to a waste of time for everyone involved. ...
“Now that interviews are typically virtual, it has become common practice for employers to expect candidates to make themselves available for multiple rounds of interviews, possibly extended over several weeks or months, and often with very little notice; whereas previously interviewer schedules might have been coordinated for one (or maximum two) on-site visit for an in-person panel interview.”
These are just a few of the ridiculous, unnecessary stumbling blocks Schenk calls out — in a healthcare industry that needs to staff up considerably, and needs to hire more people and hire them faster than ever before, for the foreseeable future. It’s not like healthcare organizations don’t need efficient and nimble hiring processes. They do! Perhaps more than any other industry in the United States.
(The low-tech and culture-poor hurdles Dr. Schenk describes are unfortunately common across many industries. This is not rocket science, people. Fix your recruiting and hiring tech stack. I’ve used apps built by teenagers that work better than most corporate job-application platforms.)
The Georgia Chamber CEO Has Thoughts… And Solutions
A new op-ed penned by Georgia Chamber of Commerce CEO Chris Clark and PruittHealth CEO Neil L. Pruitt Jr. has surprisingly targeted and succinct recommendations for solving the healthcare workforce crisis before it breaks us.
Excerpt from The Coming Crisis in Healthcare: Workforce:
“Right now, Georgia has nearly 40,000 job openings in the healthcare industry. In 24 months, we expect over 60,000 openings. By 2030, when the baby boomers retire, we’ll need 100,000. … By 2030 we’ll be in a full-blown crisis that will negatively impact care and public safety! ...
“This has greatly affected the bottom line of healthcare facilities, with many of the country’s leading hospital systems posting massive losses. Institutions were already operating at the margins prior to 2020, but the pandemic only increased demands from facilities while also producing skyrocketing expenses.”
The authors list a dozen recommendations, and some of their ideas haven’t yet gone mainstream but should. For example: rethinking scope of practice and expanding what nurse practitioners are allowed to do; modernizing medical records so it no longer requires staff hours to manage; expand health career pathways working with high school CTE programs; halo nursing programs. Check out the full article here.
Shout-out to Healthcare Workforce Report sponsors
The Healthcare Workforce Report newsletter is generously supported by MedCerts.
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