“Healthcare - Does It Still Look Like a Smart Career Choice-??”
Harry W Severance, MD
Consultant/Advisor | Preparedness Proponent | Workforce Advocate | Life Sciences & Research |
Surprised but honored to be noted as a 2023 Thought Leader by Becker's Healthcare . https://www.beckersasc.com/leadership/10-asc-leaders-thoughts-that-rocked-2023.html
Reviewing the comments of others quoted in this group - there is much to consider and value here!
As a key to my comment attribution, (#7) - the title should read “Healthcare - Does this still look like a smart career choice?”
I continue to find, in my interviews, that decisions to leave healthcare for other careers are multi-factorial and individualized, but there is usually one “tipping point” issue that becomes a “final straw” for each person.
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For many, especially physicians, it can be the specter of future of continued declining pay and loss of autonomy within a career that ‘front-end’ costs upwards of $250,000 -to- $ half a million to even enter - without any significant earnings for at least a decade or more - while debts accrue. Link - https://www.beckersasc.com/asc-news/the-final-straw-will-declining-physician-pay-be-the-disruptor-that-breaks-the-camels-back.html
Recently, for increasing numbers of physicians, nurses, and other health professionals, a ‘final straw’ has become the fear of physical violence with death, disability, burnout, mental anguish, PTSD - from those that we have to chosen to provide service to – our patients. Link - https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/106503?trw=no - All while - just for seeking mental wellness support from this workplace-induced anguish - our own healthcare and legal system can punish us and declare us ‘mentally unfit’ - thus sanctioned (after years of training and expense) from continuing to earn a healthcare living! And - meanwhile increasing numbers of law enforcement and political/healthcare leaders now are telling us that violence is now “just part of the job” – and to “get used to it” - or just leave! Link - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7139270098514534400/
But, for whichever of these ‘tipping point’ reasons - a clear result is the accelerating exodus out of ‘hands-on’ healthcare by more and more doctors, nurses, and other workers.
As I recently noted in several other publications, this ‘tipping point’ phenomenon has now reached our medical and nursing student populations (and pre-meds) – groups of very bright minds with huge flexibility in their future career choices. This leads me back to my suggestion that the title here and critical message is –
“Healthcare - Does this still look like a smart career choice?”
For many, the answer is increasingly – NO!
American Medical Association American Hospital Association American College of Emergency Physicians Tennessee Medical Association Patsy Newitt Lee Katherine Moore, MD FACEP Susanna Vogel Deidre McPhillips Erin Schumaker Alison Haddock, MD, FACEP Susan Morse Heather Landi Chelsea Torres Amy Feldman Stanton Elseroad, MD, MBA, FACEP C. Scott Franklin Jakob Emerson Mel Cortez Kevin Hern Amanda M. Pairitz-Campo, MPS Jessica Maye, DO FACEP TENNESSEE COLLEGE OF EMERGENCY PHYSICIANS Leon C. Adelman, MD, MBA, FACEP, FAAEM Mark Plaster MD, JD Laura Wooster, MPH
President at Five Star Clinical Solutions, LLC
7moAs one of my very brilliant sons pointed out, if all the really bright & creative people decided to pick up their toys and leave (he was referring to leave America), we would all be in serious trouble! Healthcare -aka, ALL OF US, are in real trouble, & it is getting worse by the day!
DNP, MBA/MHA, RN, NEA-BC Créatif|Author of Amazon #1 New Release The Healing Burnout Guide at Victorem Enterprises LLC
7moNo way would I redo this career path (and the reasons have nothing to do with being a nurse).
Basic Health Access
7moAnd MD DO NP and PA academics and government entities claiming that health professional training can fix these deficits - obviously have no clue how many vote against basic health access for most Americans in so many dimensions of so many designs against. The academics benefit from new types or massive expansions or special training designs - THAT CANNOT WORK. And big health sits at the seats of the feeding trough and shapes what enters and what leaves and who runs the show.
Basic Health Access
7moNO!!!! We have reached an end point with collapse of reason and accountability at the highest levels of health care leadership at the federal, state, local, and employer levels. They hire researchers who come up in favor of their decisions. They most violate vulnerable population, beneficent intent, and informed consent. They have never studied the consequences. They have never experienced the abuse. And they still think that they are about health equity and access when they are killing both. We must stop the madness of more and more being trained to be cannon fodder as their basic health access delivery teams are MELTED away and as they melt away from primary care, mental health, womens health, and where most Americans most need care. It is an endless treadmill as the faster they are produced, the faster they are MELTED away CMS votes 1.4 trillion against everything that HRSA does - CHCs, incentives, and training grants. So everyone thinks that HRSA is wonderful - except that it gives the excuse for more CMS abuses.