Healthcare’s “Great Resignation” of Burnt Out Workers: Most Used Lakewood Facilities Are in A Hiring Frenzy | Aharon Ben David

This article is a follow up to last week’s: New US Surgeon General’s Report: Solving Healthcare Worker Burnout

“More than half a million registered nurses will be retiring by the end of 2022 and a shortage of more than 3 million low-wage health workers is projected over the next five years.”

The Association of American Medical Colleges has also projected a shortage of 139,000 physicians by 2033.

A recent survey of 1,000 healthcare professionals showed that 28% had quit a job because of burnout.

Treating ill people isn’t easy and losing them is tragic, to say the least.

Local Hospitals in A Hiring Frenzy:

Monmouth Medical Center Southern Campus, Hackensack Meridian – Jersey Shore University Medical Center, RJ Barnabas, Community Medical Center, United Health Group, JFK Medical Center, Hackensack University Medical Center, Ocean Medical Center

In what is called “The Great Resignation”, the continuing mass exodus of healthcare workers has taken its toll much harder than other sectors. According to some reports, the healthcare field has lost an estimated 20% of its workforce, including a staggering loss of 30% of nurses.

Just this year alone, close to 1.7 million people have left their healthcare jobs. That adds up to almost 3% of the healthcare workforce for each month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Healthcare Workers Who Left Their Jobs (Latest Statistics)

  • Mar. 2021-474,000
  • Nov. 2021-626,000
  • Dec. 2021-540,000
  • Jan.  2022-559,000
  • Feb. 2022-561,000
  • Mar. 2022-542,000

These departures create a current as well as a real fear of future staffing shortages.

Where are all those highly skilled medical workers going?

The loss of medical workers is so prevalent that the most used hospitals in Lakewood are in a hiring frenzy:

Many healthcare workers who quit are taking other healthcare jobs, some in different positions, to move away from emergency and critical care roles. Some have even sought different careers entirely.

A local director of a long-term care facility says she was expected to be available at all times, every day of the year. “My phone was never off; I was totally burned out. I really loved nursing, but I desperately needed work-life balance.”

Ultimately, she quit her full-time job and now takes shifts through a staffing app which allows clinicians to sign up for shifts online based on their own personal schedule, preferences, and availability. She can now spend more quality time with her family and other projects.

If your home calendar is your priority, you can schedule your work shifts around that. Take a vacation? Spend more time with your kids? Now I can I work for myself, on my own terms.

According to Will Patterson, CEO, and founder of CareRev, a part-time healthcare staffing agency, this is a growing trend for clinicians.

Patterson says, “Today’s worker expects greater flexibility. They expect to have a greater degree of freedom over when they work and for whom clinical professionals are no exception.”

As a former trauma nurse, Patterson had firsthand experience of the impact of inflexible hospital scheduling. The ICU was short-staffed when patient volume got close to capacity.

“When you’re taking on responsibility for more lives than you can reasonably handle—for days at a time—you burn out quickly… now, after over two years of fighting the pandemic, burnout is at an all-time high. And as the nurse shortage worsens, that burnout is only going to continue to accelerate.”

Patterson adds that many burned out clinicians haven’t lost their passion for healthcare, they just want more autonomy over their schedules, which can last for extremely long hours and rob them of a work-life balance.

This caused another to quit her job as a director of Occupational and Physical therapy in home healthcare. Productivity was measured by the number of visits completed not counting all the time and effort she had to spend on phone calls, documentation, and scheduling.

Many healthcare workers have complained that payment, regulations, and the burden of “administrivial red tape” is the most stressful part of the job. Unfortunately, when a healthcare provider is driven by profitability, marketing promises or even non-compliant provider demands, clinicians are pressed to follow orders, and patient care suffers.

Many jobs are available for people with lesser skills and significantly less pay in the healthcare field. There are many skills that can be transferred to other professional areas, even outside of healthcare, if you are organized, are an effective communicator and work well as part of a team.

In fact, burned out workers are using their transferrable skills to even launch their own ventures.

One nurse quit her job as a registered nurse in a pediatric intensive care unit due to the stresses of the pandemic combined with having two young children. Instead of getting another job, she launched her own business to provide support for new mothers. There can be many creative opportunities to help others as nurses.

The pandemic is attributed to many healthcare workers to rethink their career. Another example, in New Jersey, is a licensed, board-certified art therapist who was employed for almost four years in the pediatric cancer department at New York-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital. Even before the pandemic, she would frequently carry 25 cases of children in one day. These kids required serious health issues like cancer, blood disorders, or gastrointestinal diseases.

During the pandemic she was redeployed to provide emotional support and basic needs for frontline medical staff working in Covid-19 units. Seeing staff in hazmat suits responding to a patient in distress and she was constantly thinking, “That could be me; that could be anyone I love.” After that, she had was determined to change her own priorities. “I decided that I wanted to scale down in order to be more present. I also needed time off to recalibrate and heal.”

She now runs her own psychotherapy practice.  She has stern advice for healthcare organizations hoping to retain staff: “Hospitals need to solve issues at the core, not with gift cards and lunches, there are systemic problems that no amount of bonuses can fix.”

The “Great Resignation” isn’t just about clinicians. Christopher K. Lee, MPH, 31, had been working in healthcare management for more than a decade. Last month, he resigned from a senior manager role at a major healthcare facility 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 people, during the pandemic I reflected on my priorities, and spending 3+ hours commuting a day no longer aligned with what I envisioned for my life.”

Now, he is writing a book about professional networking and doing advocacy work in teen and young adult mental health, projects he always wanted to do “someday.” Lee said, “In the shadow of the pandemic, I decided: If I don’t do them now, what if I never get a chance?”

Others are completely giving up the stressful clinical work and schedules and turning to their own personally rewarding creative pursuits. One LCSW worked as a psychiatric emergency room social worker in a large hospital. She quit because of a toxic work environment, unsupportive administration, verbally and physically abusive patients, and a salary that in no way offered her the compensation to the amount of stress she had to endure.

She had been running a blog as a hobby for ten years and turned into her primary source of income. She now makes more money than she was as a social worker.

“The minute you’re on the other side, you’ll ask yourself why you didn’t do it sooner,” she said. “I sleep better, I’m able to be present for my family, and my quality of life is through the roof.”

This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
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