More than half (57%) blamed staffing shortages for the lack of care, and experts told HealthDay Now that these folks aren’t wrong.
Nurses, doctors and other healthcare workers are burned out after three years of the pandemic, and some are choosing to leave the profession, the experts said.
“We were the frontline,” said Kelly Morgan, a labor and delivery nurse at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and chair of the Massachusetts Nursing Association. “We were the people that were fighting this pandemic, and we were exposed every day. The triggers that come along with that are the constant stress and mental fatigue, physical fatigue — in essence, like PTSD from that environment.”
As a result, morale has suffered, and people are walking away, Morgan told HealthDay Now.
“In many hospitals, people felt like, you’re throwing us to the wolves, and you’re not helping us and providing us the necessary resources that we need — the personal protective equipment, that sort of stuff,” Morgan said. “And it still hasn’t changed three years in. Our nursing turnover is huge.
“They’re like, I don’t want to do this anymore,” Morgan continued. “I don’t want to do bedside nursing anymore. I’m leaving the bedside, and going to work in an ambulatory clinic, or I’m going to completely leave nursing as a profession at all, because this is just not what it was like to be a nurse before.”
Doctors and nurses leaving the profession has a direct effect on the ability of patients to receive care, particularly in rural areas, said Brock Slabach, chief operations officer for the National Rural Health Association.
Rural hospitals hit hardest
“This constellation of provider shortages has created huge gaps in the ability for hospitals to serve their rural communities in an effective way,” Slabach told HealthDay Now.
“What’s happened is that the facilities have scaled back their ability to admit patients and to provide care,” said Slabach, who has more than 21 years of experience as a rural hospital administrator. “Instead of having 25 beds open, they may only have 10 beds because they can adequately staff that. Then what happens is you have patients possibly being stacked in the emergency room.”
People also are showing up to the hospital sicker, suffering from health problems that could have been nipped in the bud with prompt treatment, Morgan said.
“It’s trickled down to every single discipline,” Morgan said. “It’s just halted the care delivery system, and that’s why so many people are showing up to the emergency room to have their primary care, because they can’t access the services.”
For example, someone with COVID could avoid the ER if they got a timely diagnosis and prompt access to antiviral drugs, Morgan said.
“But they didn’t, and now here they are three weeks later sick with COVID pneumonia requiring respiratory support and admission to the hospital,” Morgan said.
The American healthcare system will need to provide better support to its workers if it wants to build back capacity, Morgan said.
“We don’t need adoration every day,” Morgan said. “We’re not asking for that. We’re asking for the proper staffing, equipment, space and resources to take care of our patients safely on a daily basis and provide the care that we have always been able to provide them, without them knowing that we’re facing these challenges.”
As things stand now, Morgan worries that stressed-out doctors and nurses aren’t providing the best care to patients.
“I’m sure that there are days that people aren’t as cheerful as they normally were, don’t feel as compassionate as they did, even though we’re trying not to deliver that message to our patients,” Morgan said.
Creating better work environments
There also are practical matters that interfere with care. Due to staffing shortages, nurses try to “cluster” care, Morgan said — for example, changing a dressing and providing medications during the same room visit rather than seeing the patient twice.
As a result, there “may be a significant time before we come back again, unless there is a need,” Morgan said. “You’re trying to give that care to the rest of your patients as well,” but patients can wind up feeling neglected.
Rebuilding hospital capacity will take a community effort, with towns and cities working to make themselves inviting for potential healthcare professionals, Slabach said.
Hospitals also will need to pay better and create a culture “that allows for the employee to thrive in the practice that they’ve chosen,” Slabach said.
“This means that really looking at all of those policies and procedures that would detract from somebody that would want to fulfill the mission that they have in their lives to serve people,” Slabach said. “We find that most people really have a missionary spirit. They want to be of service, they want to be of use to others. So we need to make sure that our facilities are providing the environment for them to be able to do that work in the way that they hoped to.”
That’s easier said than done, given the financial crunch facing many rural hospitals, he noted.
About 140 U.S. hospitals have closed since 2010, including 19 in 2020 alone, Slabach said. Extra money for dealing with the pandemic has helped financially strapped hospitals stay afloat, but that funding has stopped.
“We’re anticipating some very rough days ahead, in terms of hospital closures, hospital finances which could lead to closure,” Slabach said.
But without action, there’s the continued risk that longtime nurses like Morgan will walk away.
Morgan said she’s thought about quitting “more than I care to remember in the last few years.”
“I always used to think I am so lucky, how am I so lucky that this is what I get to do for a living,” Morgan said. “And I have not had many of those days in the last two and a half years. And that’s disheartening. Because a nurse goes into nursing because they want to help, and they want to take care of people. They want to nurture and make people well again. And it hasn’t felt like we’ve succeeded at that.”
More information
The University of Southern California has more about staffing shortages in healthcare.
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Nobody wants to do anything anymore.
I’m a retired, and unvaccinated, American MD. Over the last year I have gotten more (temporary or part-time) job offers than at any previous point in my career; I take this to mean that a lot of docs have “left the building”, and that stop-gap replacements are highly sought after.
Like many, I see little residual integrity among American physicians (though of course there are still a few ‘good docs’ out there). Aside from required surgical interventions, fractures and such, American health care is to be diligently avoided.
Even if I were ten years younger, there is no fvcking way I would go back to work in the FUSA, and support “our” American “healthcare system”, which really has devolved into little more than an extortion racket, and is cheerfully complicit in the giant pack of COVID lies.
In your professional opinion, August, is it possible to build a parallel low-key and local functional medical system?
IMO, no. Just like unpasteurized cheese/milk, farm butchered meat, un-vaccinated animals, TPTB will lawfare it into the ground.
There can be nobody outside their fence. Any doctor practicing outside of the ‘official system’ will be destroyed financially or jailed.
“All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” ~Benito Mussolini
TPTB will pressure the banks to block any funding for the alternative sources of medical care. The media will report on a medical intervention gone wrong and turn the morans against anything that’s not a part of the system.
California is taking away the licenses of doctors that don’t comply with the government line as spreading misinformation. There is only one correct course, the government dictated course, which is designed to kill more people now.
Hard for me to say, AA, since I spent the last eleven years of my career working outside the FUSA (because I could no longer stomach what “we” had become domestically). I last worked in the FUSA in 2013, in a relatively ‘retrograde’ small city in the Intermountain West.
I believe that the answer to your question is “yes”; from what I read online there are medical practitioners out there who still try to get, and keep, their patients healthy, as opposed cultivating their ongoing maladies as some sort of cash crop. Tellingly, the ‘good guy’ doctors that I personally have heard or read online don’t reveal their names and locations, presumably because they’re already busy enough, and also do not want to attract the attention of the Authorities who have the power to end their careers with a few phone calls and strokes of the pen.
FWIW, Ann Barnhardt has had one or two such (unnamed) docs on her podcasts. For surgical issues, there is a fairly well-known clinic in Oklahoma:
I’ve never dealt with them, but they may have some more specific suggestions than I can supply.
I’d also suggest making inquiries in local circles such as health food stores, unvaccinated friends, naturopaths etc. Maybe even among the ‘health nuts’ at the local gym. I believe that one day soon these semi-underground practitioners will become easier to find, since the current FUSA system is indeed unsustainable.
Best wishes.
Thanks for your considered response, doc.
We might start seeing more and more sites like this one:
https://www.twc.health/
Why don’t you offer your services out of your home? Many unjabbed folks would be interested. In the old days a doctor’s office was attached to his house. Bring house calls back.
I’m just to old, arthritic and have significant (congenital) health issues.
But you have knowledge and experience. that could be passed on and is worth more than money can buy. So take gold or silver instead.
Had a great D.O. who called it quits for the very reasons you described. I miss him but can’t blame him.
One day in the near future the only doctors that are trusted will be the ones who chose to not work from 2020-2025 for obvious reasons. Maybe that’s when I will work again. Or trust a colleague other than august or javelin.
Seems to me the tyrants that are pushing this great rest are all jumping for joy. The vax that doesn’t stop anything, the economy that doesn’t build or produce anything, the service sector that can’t serve anyone, the working class that is becoming use to a tin cup life & some of the medical professionals that have been denied practicing because they failed to get in step with those that drank the cool-aid. I am sure I have missed a crapper full of occupations that need listing. Feel free to add.
FOLKS, WE ARE TRULY IN TROUBLE. This is not going to turn out well for a lot of folks.
It’s 100% fault of the stupid public. None of this could happen without their compliance.
I have been out since 2012 due to car accident, could finally go back but then covid and then mandatory vax. I will now retire and let my license go it isn’t at all what it used to be. Which is sad for those of us boomers moving into the age we need health care more often. Never let a family member stay alone if there is any way to avoid it.
Fuck medikal/hellthcare professionals. They were mostly all-too -happy to get along with the Pestilence programme:
Besides, dead Lumpen do not need any “health-care”. So the less people in the career field is no biggie.
Be responsible for your own health; eat right, exercise. get plenty of quality sleep plus use any practicable alternative to the collapsing medical system if possible when necessary.
Resignation does not get them any amnesty for their participation in these crimes against humanity. NEVER FORGIVE, NEVER FORGET !
This is one of those articles that I consider propaganda bullshit……………all this – No personnel – is by design. Still pushes the Covid BS as the reason……….
We have to head out to major medical soon and getting information about requirements for procedure I asked if they were still requiring “MUZZLING” Oops?? masking people – she laughed and let me know, yeah, pretty much know it is BS – but thinking later about the hospitals still requiring this when everyone else seems to have stopped, there are 2 camps now – the people they are still scaring – the fearful, and then there are the ANGRY that they are still pushing this stuff on us. I’m of the angry crowd. It’s time people who are angry to be writing letters to their news stations still pushing this crap and calling them out and the admin of their local medical providers telling them how STUPID, they and the personnel they have left, look.
Tilting at windmills I suppose………..
Yes, you are Don Quixote! 😉
From ’79 to ’19 I was in the trenches of patient care. I got out for family reasons but was glad to go just over insistence about flu shots. I am not willing to work anywhere that wants to dictate health care decisions to me.
My nephew is currently going to perdue university nw for a nursing degree. It is insane what he has to go through and pay to become a nurse.I told him he should have went to Ivy Tech and become an electrician. He has to go through endless background checks,drug tests ,vaccinations he must buy all his own uniforms etc . If these hospitals have a fuck they would sponsor these kids for future employment oh and let’s not forget 15 k a year for school.
GOOD. Let every one of these corporate owned hospitals aka slaughterhouses go broke. Doctors should start up their own small hospitals to give people quality humane care. People should not have to be terrified to go to a hospital wondering if they will be murdered for Biden bucks.
Provide medicine as you would cheeseburgers, shoes, lawnmowers. Compete and perform for the medicine consumer dollar.
MORE: https://www.lewrockwell.com/?s=free+market+medicine
Medical-education complex. There are too many roadblocks to working in health care and nowhere near enough graduates to replace the baby boomer health care workers.
Meanwhile, there are huge numbers of baby boomers aging to the point they require regular health care.
You got that right. More and more patient contact is with nurse practitioners, physician assistants and similar. Some are quite good, but…..
I’ve told my young relatives that they should get a medical degree only if they have some sort of burning desire to do; given the current operating environment, I probably wouldn’t do medicine again, though that’s a pretty hypothetical matter.
I would not recommend medicine as a career for anyone at this point. Not surprisingly, when I look around, the offspring of our double-doctor-couple-friends have been going into computer science, business/MBA, food/restaurant industry, deep sea diving instructor and engineering. No future doctor in sight.
Pandemic ptsd. Shameless, not to mention murderous, these “healthcare” “professionals.” Always. Not just now or lately.
Cartels, all of them, exist to “prove” “competition is for losers.”
Which is to say uncompetitive losers don’t want to compete but do want the biggest, fattest, slices they can get despite not earning them … every … single … day.
Cartels are not competitive, the people in them are not competitive. They are convenience-seeking. They are rent-seeking. They are parasites.
“You can only get it (fill in the blank) through us” :: mobsters, gangsters, criminals. The absolute worst of these are always hiding behind color of law, mere legality, the “rules-based order.”
And now the parasites that created them are un-creating them. There’s gonna be heartache tonight, but not by Glenn Frey, whose “healthcare” did not carry the day, as usual ~ & not by me, either.
Cartels are shit. So are their denizens.
Strangely, there’s no mention of the doctors and nurses and other medical staff that either quit or were fired for either not taking the jabs or for ‘coloring outside the lines’ permitted by BigPharma/BigMedicine … i.e., they were advocating for proper treatment of their patients who had the FauciFlu, and that was forbidden.
Right from the very beginning (I’m talking very early Spring, 2020, hospital chains were censoring their medical staffs and what they were permitted to say, think or do about treatment options for their FauciFlu patients …
Other than repairing broken bones and basic repair type surgeries, I can no longer trust anyone in the medical profession. Hell, my daughter works in a very large hospital, it is evident she drank the covid coolaid.
I noticed around 2014 or so our hospital only had very young nurses. No boomers there. I thought they probably got forced out because’they were making too much’.
Anyone ever consider that this is all part of the Obozo plan to demean physicians down to the level of cartage workers and replace the truly dedicated with partially educated, uncaring people who believe that medical care personnel should be government workers like the DMV.
Dunno about that.
Do know that rent-seekers are pre-demeaned.
If your cartage worker isn’t also mobbed up, unionized, in a cartel, s/he’s superior to “docs” – & always has been.
Yes, I have considered that one of the objectives of Obmacare was to undermine the ability and/or willingness of healthcare workers to organize for their own interests and that of their patients.
Nobody with customer-centric, i.e. correct, interest-focus, has “patients.”
And them that do have patients have victims, not customers.
This precedes the obam junk. This precedes all here.
My doctor quit the corporate medical world and started his own practice two years ago during the covid craze. He could not treat his patients with medicine that actually worked so he walked away.
He’s a concierge doctor now, and practices wellness vs come to him when you’re sick. He gives out his cell number so you can call him whenever, I text him blood pressure readings I take at home and other communications.