Treating sick people is not easy and losing them is even more difficult
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Mass layoffs, a mass outflow of dissatisfied workers, have hit few industries more than healthcare. According to some reports, the field has lost an estimated 20% of the workforce, including 30% of nurses.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 1.7 million people have left the health care industry this year alone. This represents almost 3% of healthcare professionals each month.
A recent survey of 1,000 medical professionals also showed that 28% quit their jobs because of burnout.
These withdrawals not only create fears of current and future staff shortages, but also raise other questions. Where are these highly skilled workers going?
Many health professionals who quit take on other health jobs, but the situation can be very different.
Lauren Berlin, RN, 45, has been a nurse in Wisconsin and Florida for 21 years and has recently been hired as a nursing director at a long-term care facility. In her role, she says she was expected to be available at all times, every day of the year.
“My phone never turned off,” she said. “I burned out. I loved bedside nursing, but I really needed a balance between work and life.”
Berlin has quit his full-time job and is now shifting through Care Rev. This is a dispatch app that allows clinicians to sign up for shifts online based on schedule, preferences, and availability.
This flexibility allows Berlin to focus on other passions. It is to teach athletics in Milwaukee in the city center.
“If you prioritize your home calendar, schedule your work shifts around your home calendar … Want to take a vacation? Go ahead, you don’t have to ask anyone,” Berlin said. Told. “I work for myself on my own terms.”
According to Will Patterson, CEO and founder of CareRev, Berlin reflects a growing trend among clinicians.
“Workers today expect greater flexibility. They expect greater freedom when and for whom,” Patterson said. “Clinical professionals are no exception.”
Former trauma nurse Patterson saw firsthand the impact of inflexible hospital scheduling. This can lead to a shortage of ICU personnel when the number of patients peaks.
“When you take on more life responsibilities than you can reasonably handle-days at a time-you burn out quickly,” he said. “Now, after more than two years of fighting the pandemic, the burnout has reached its highest level ever, and as the shortage of nurses worsens, the burnout only continues to accelerate.”
According to Patterson, many burned-out clinicians have not lost their passion for healthcare. They want more autonomy and a balance between work and life.
Due to an imbalance between work and life, 45-year-old Jill Bowen quit his job as director of physiotherapy in the home care industry. Her productivity was measured by the number of her visits completed without credit for all the time she had to spend on her phone calls, documentation, and scheduling.
“Payments, regulations, and all bureaucracy are the most stressful parts of the job,” Bowen said. “If the agency is driven by profitability, marketing commitments, or the demands of non-compliant providers, clinicians are forced to comply and patient care suffers.”
Bowen is currently working as an implementation consultant for Axxess, a software company that serves home healthcare institutions. She encourages other clinicians to recognize and use their transferable skills.
“”There are many jobs available to people with skills developed in the healthcare field, “says Bowen. “We have the skills to divert to other disciplines, such as organized and effective communicators and team players.”
Some burned-out workers are using their transferable skills to launch their own ventures.
Taylor Bonacorta, 28, from Fort Myers, Florida, quit her job as a registered nurse in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit a year ago because of pandemic stress and having two young children. .. She launched Lily in June instead of Bonacorta getting another job. This is a business that supports new mothers.
“If there are other healthcare professionals considering quitting, we remind them that there are so many different ways we can help others as nurses,” Bonacorta said. Told.
The pandemic also urged Jackie Taciello, 34, to rethink her career. Taciello, a New Jersey-approved board-certified art therapist, has been employed in the Children’s Cancer Division of the Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital in New York for almost four years. Prior to the pandemic, she often had 25 children a day, all navigating to cancer, blood disorders, or gastrointestinal disorders.
During the pandemic, Tassiello provided emotional support and was relocated to meet the basic needs of frontline medical staff working in the Covid-19 unit. She said she remembers seeing staff in hazmat suits reacting to the suffering patient and thinking: It can be anyone I love. “
These experiences have changed Tassiello’s own priorities.
“I wanted to scale down to show more presence, and I needed a vacation to readjust and repair,” she said.
Currently practicing her own psychotherapy, Tasiero gives some advice to medical institutions that want to keep their staff. “There are systematic issues that cannot be fixed by the amount of bonuses.”
Some healthcare professionals have completely abandoned their clinical practice and turned to creative pursuits.
Cari Garcia, LCSW, 38, recently worked as a social worker in a psychiatric emergency room at a large Florida hospital. She says she quit because of a toxic work environment, unsupported management, verbal and physically abusive patients, and made payments that did not justify the level of stress she had to endure.
Garcia says she has turned her 10-year hobby food blog into a major source of income and now makes more money than social workers. Garcia encourages other healthcare professionals who are considering stopping the leap.
“As soon as I’m on the other side, I’ll ask myself why I didn’t do it early,” she said. “I can sleep well, witness for my family, and my quality of life is beyond the roof.”
Mass layoffs aren’t just for clinicians. Christopher K. Lee, MPH, 31, has been involved in healthcare management for over a decade. Last month, he resigned from UCLA Health’s senior management position after being required to be in the office every day since October 2021.
“I tried to make it work, but in March I decided I couldn’t do it anymore,” Lee said. “Like many, during a pandemic, I look back on my priorities and commuting for more than three hours a day is no longer in line with what I had imagined in my life.”
Currently, Lee says he is writing a book about professional networking and advocacy in mental health for teens and young adults, a project he always wanted to do “someday.”
“Behind the pandemic, I made up my mind. If I didn’t do it now, what if I didn’t have a chance?”
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