Workforce Shortages in Healthcare

Workforce Shortages in Healthcare
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Workforce Shortages in Healthcare
American has been facing shortages of healthcare workers for some time. The inability of the current healthcare professionals to attend to the increasing number of patients is wanting. Health professionals play a critical role in improving access and quality of care. They offer critical services that promote health and prevent diseases. With the increasing workforce shortage, the population is unable to access these services. There is a crisis looming, which will have adverse effects on patient outcomes. The problem of workforce shortage can be attributed to the aging population, the aging healthcare workforce and the insufficient number of training facilities.
Aging population
The aging population has increased the demand for healthcare services. The increase in the number of aging baby boomers is putting more strain on the healthcare system. By the year 2030, all the baby boomers will be more than 65 years (U.S. Census Bureau, 2018). This means that the number of older adults will account for 20.3% of the entire U.S. population. Patients aged 65 years and above visit physicians more than those who are younger. The older adults also are more vulnerable to chronic diseases which increases demand for specialists.
One way of addressing the problem of the aging population in the short-term is by encouraging volunteering among the elderly. The government can reward healthcare professionals who choose to volunteer their services among older adults. The government can also encourage more healthcare workers to engage in unpaid activities to promote health among the elderly. This will ensure that older adults receive care without necessarily increasing costs (Mui, Glajchen, Che & Sun, 2013). Another short-term solution is offering incentives for the elderly to engage in creative activities like music, painting, and writing. The government can encourage these activities by financing community centers for older adults. Engaging the elderly in such activities will enhance their wellbeing which will minimize incidences of sickness.
In the long-term, healthcare professionals can embrace team-based care. Here, healthcare professionals work together in individual patient cases. Collectively, healthcare professionals can handle a larger pool of patients compared to when they work as individuals. (Okun et al., 2014) Team-based care will increase the rate of handling elderly patients. Another solution is embracing technology especially telemedicine. Using this technology, healthcare professionals can offer medical services to older adult patients remotely. Additionally, healthcare professionals need to encourage older adults to engage in self-care. Using this approach, older adults will not need to visit healthcare professionals for something that they can do for themselves. Self-care will reduce the number of visitations that older adults have to make to healthcare facilities.
Furthermore, healthcare facilities need to improve their efficiency in order to handle older adults. Considering that older adults are more likely to visit the healthcare facilities more times compared to the younger generation, healthcare facilities need to align their services to cater to the needs of this group. Identifying ways of attending to older adults will ensure that healthcare facilities can cater for a large number of older adults seeking medical services.
The aging healthcare workforce
On the supply side, the larger number of an aging workforce is responsible for the increasing workforce shortage. The number of aging physicians who are heading into retirement has increased over the years (Sharp, 2019). The retiring specialists are being replaced by a new generation of healthcare professionals who prefer to work part-time or in specialties. The new generation of specialists is less likely to work in demanding on-call duties. They emphasize more on premium lifestyles compared to their older counterparts, which reduces the amount of supply. Hence, such professionals see fewer patients despite the growing number of patients.
The short-term solution to the problem of aging is phased-in-retirement. It can involve encouraging the older workers to remain longer in their positions (Sherman, Chiang‐Hanisko & Koszalinski, 2013). It can also be through allowing the older professionals to work fewer hours to remain longer in the profession, even after retirement. The move will ensure that more healthcare professionals do not retire and leave positions that the current supply of professionals cannot fill.
In the long-term, however, there is a need to get rid of unnecessary barriers to the licensing of physicians and other healthcare professionals. For instance, nursing practitioners are becoming more capable of providing care that is offered by primary–care physicians. Nursing practitioners offer care at relatively lower costs compared to physicians. Some regulators and professional associations may object to the idea of allowing nursing practitioners to offer primary care. They may indicate the need to protect the public from low-quality providers. However, given that nursing practitioners are receiving high-quality training, they are in a position to work alongside the physicians (Woo, Lee & Tam, 2017). Hence, licensing the nursing practitioners to offer primary care in all the states will increase the number of patients who can access these services. Additionally, there is a need for the government to make healthcare courses more attractive to students. The government can offer more incentives to students who wish to pursue health-related courses to boost enrollment.
Faculty Shortage
The third reason for workforce shortages is the United States is faculty shortage. The problem of faculty shor...