Health Manpower Availability and the Meaning of Shortages

Health Manpower Availability and the Meaning of Shortages

Carlson, J. (2010). Struggling with shortages. Modern Healthcare, 40, 10.

Struggling with shortages in healthcare seems to be a common topic but there never seems to be a common answer. Even in a time when layoffs and attrition are the norms in the job world today, there is a drive to attract new healthcare providers and keep the older ones who are thinking about retirement. What we have been hearing in healthcare is that over the next two decades the majority of the baby boomers will be taking the step to retirement and be consumers of healthcare demanding more of a shrinking healthcare workforce.

Training new healthcare workers has become a difficult part of the dilemma to achieve adequate staffing. The process to acquire an education for physician, nurse practitioners and occupational therapists just to name a few, may take years. This is not an overnight fix for the shortage while waiting for students to complete their degree. There is a push now to redesign the workplace to be more efficient for staff. This would allow them to take care of more patients but the efforts just seem to lead to more work and longer hours.

Leaders have no strategy for staffing that has a five year future. It is usually getting through one day at a time and surviving. There is sufficient skepticism when management talks about redesign because staff see the same or fewer people working in the same busy patient care areas. Strategies have called for older workers to have less laborious work and using their years of education and teaching and mentoring new staff who can have a more multipurpose role in the units.