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Medical Staffing Issues

The term "medical staffing" is used to describe employees hired to provide services including triage, resuscitation, radiology, pathology, nursing, administration, as well as primary and secondary care physicians and specialists. Staffing relates to regular, emergency and specialty care. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics lists more than 30 categories of medical staff careers in 2010.

  1. Quality Standards

    • Availability of appropriate medical equipment, access to trained professionals equipped with the knowledge to operate the machinery, and access to accurate patient medical records adds to increased medical quality for patients. Medical errors and failure to protect the patient's safety is a major medical staffing concern, according to the U.S. Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. The first major U.S. Institute of Medicine report outlining quality problems in 1999 cited 44,000 to 98,000 patient deaths due to medical errors. Current estimates for faulty medical quality list over 200,000 deaths, according to a Hearst media investigation.

    Nursing Shortages

    • The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that medical facilities that fail to have adequate nursing staff "tend to have higher rates of poor patient outcomes". The department itemizes shock, urinary tract infections, cardiac arrest, and pneumonia as examples of the outcomes of nurse shortages. Additional concerns when the nursing staff ratio to patient level is low include failure to rescue a patient in a life-threatening situation that results in the death of the patient and upper gastrointestinal bleeding, according the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

    Family Physician Shortage

    • Roger A. Rosenblatt, M.D., C. Holly A. Andrilla, M.S., Thomas Curtin, M.D. and L. Gary Hart Ph.D. reported in 2006 the declining interest in U.S. medical students in pursuing careers in family medicine in the "Journal of the American Medical Association". Family medicine and general physicians made up just over 12 percent of active physicians in 2007, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the majority worked in a medical office. The shortage of qualified family physicians will increase until 2018 due to an aging population in the U.S. and a large number of retirements, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    Rural Staffing Shortages

    • The Rosenblatt and associates report for the "American Medical Association" also notes in 2006 the staffing crisis for medical facilities located in rural areas of the U.S. The group found that nearly 50 percent of rural patients were treated by non-physician clinicians. The general survey reported rural shortages in obstetrician and gynecologists, psychiatrists and family positions. The reasons for these shortages included poor-quality schools available for children of medical care workers and lack of quality housing. Other reasons cited by medical staff included the lack of jobs for a spouse in rural locations and the perceived cultural isolation. Low salaries in rural areas was also cited as a factor blocking recruitment of quality medical staff for rural health centers.

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