Health care workforce turnover increased after pandemic

There was a rise in well being care workforce turnover after the pandemic, in line with a study printed on-line Jan. 26 in JAMA Well being Discussion board.

Karen Shen, Ph.D., from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Faculty of Public Well being in Baltimore, and colleagues quantified the variety of staff exiting from and getting into into the well being care workforce earlier than and after the COVID-19 pandemic utilizing U.S. Census Bureau state unemployment insurance coverage knowledge.

The researchers discovered that roughly 18.8 million folks had been working within the health care sector on this pattern in quarter 1 of 2020. On the onset of the pandemic, there was a rise within the exit price for health care workers, from a baseline quarterly imply of 5.9 share factors to eight.0 share factors in 2018 and quarter 1 of 2020, respectively. By means of quarter 4 of 2021, exit charges remained larger than baseline ranges, with the well being care exit price 7.7 share factors larger than the baseline in 2018.

The rise in well being care employee exit charges was dominated by a rise in staff exiting to nonemployment in quarter 1 of 2020 (78% enhance versus baseline); in contrast, the exit price was dominated by staff exiting to employment in non-health care sectors by quarter 4 of 2021 (38% enhance). There was a rise seen in entry charges in well being care within the postpandemic interval, suggesting elevated turnover of well being care workers.

“Given these findings, coverage efforts to handle well being care employee burnout and enhance well being care employee hiring pipelines are properly warranted,” the authors write.

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