The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has projected that the United States will fall between 54,100 and 139,000 physicians short by 2033. Long been a bane of the medical field, the shortage of workers in public health is paralyzing initiatives to combat public health problems such as the ongoing COVID-19 and providing hands-on care to the people who need it.
Even if leaders in the field recognize the urgent need to have more qualified medical practitioners today and, in the future, there seems to be a scarcity when it comes to solutions. The lack of working methods to mend the shortage was highlighted even more during the high of COVID-19 cases in the U.S.
The shortage is a widespread one. From licensed physicians down to well-trained CNAs or certified nursing assistants, there’s an undeniable lack of manpower, which affects not only the prevention of the spread of COVID-19 but also the management of other diseases.
What’s causing the staff shortage?
The University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine found four leading factors contributing to the shortage in healthcare manpower:
- Limited capacity in healthcare education programs
- Aging population pushing for a greater need for hands-on care.
- Surges in chronic diseases
- Aging healthcare workforce
Individuals who want to join the healthcare workforce are being turned away by educational and training institutions due to limited capacity. The reason behind this is that these institutions want to produce qualified healthcare professionals that can address the concerns of patients with the right amount of skill and knowledge.
Simply put, they’re teaching and training the future members of the healthcare workers to be better at what they do, especially once they set foot in the actual field and cater to patients with needs.
As the American population ages, it means that there are more people, usually the ones aged over 65, requiring specialized care. Some cases are individuals with medical conditions that need constant and hands-on medical attention.
The World Health Organization (WHO) predicted and a rise in cases of chronic diseases such as obesity around the world. This increase implies that there will be more people who need their medical concerns addressed at the earliest time. These chronic diseases can also affect healthcare workers themselves, which brings down the people in the workforce much lower.
Couple that with an aging workforce population, the shortage will be even more noticeable when the professionals in healthcare begin to retire with no one to fill their vacancies because of the preceding factors.
How prevalent is the shortage?
Unsurprisingly, the shortage of medical staff isn’t only experienced in the U.S. It’s prevalent enough to be a global issue, with the Human Resources for Health projecting the global need for healthcare workers to increase to 80 million by the year 2030. But the number of healthcare professionals is only expected to grow to 65 million the same year, leaving a 15 million shortage.
The global standard on healthcare is 23 medical professionals for every 10,000 people, but there is a total of 83 nations that aren’t meeting that standard. To further emphasize the lack of staff in healthcare settings, 2012 saw 6.6 million children under five years old die from preventable and treatable diseases. This expresses a lack of preventive care that can be provided if there were enough staff who weren’t occupied with addressing other medical concerns.
How are leaders trying to address the problem?
During WHO’s Third Global Forum on Human Resources for Health, leaders in healthcare gathered and came up with recommended actions in order to address the global shortage of healthcare workers. The suggestions were:
- Allowing workers to contribute to the development of universal health policies.
- Improving political and technical leadership that supports workers’ development.
- Balancing the distribution of healthcare workers and improving the working conditions in countries in greater need.
- Gathering useful data for health databases.
- Making healthcare services more accessible.
Given the current landscape in healthcare staffing, it seems like there will be easy ways to enter the medical field for individuals who aspire to join. However, educational and training institutions alike are working to limit capacities to produce more skilled professionals that can contribute to the field.
Giving healthcare workers a voice to express what they need and the changes that need to be done in terms of what’s making them come and go will also be essential to retention.
To current healthcare profession students, finding ways to get advanced education will help them find employment in the field that has high expectations from its own professionals, which sometimes proves to be one cause of the shortage but can also be the answer. More skilled professionals mean efficiency, but a higher number of lower-skilled ones can disrupt the progress.
