This is all over the country:
Similar scenarios are playing out all over Oregon. A lack of qualified healthcare workers, which began before the pandemic and worsened after COVID-19 hit, and the resulting shortage of staffed hospital beds are putting thousands of patients at risk.
….
Years before the pandemic, predictions of a nurse shortage were common. A generation of veteran nurses were aging out, and there weren’t enough youngsters to replace them.
There is always much focus on the pandemic “causing this” but as we look everywhere we see that shortages (such as of pilots – or nurses) were widespread before the pandemic. It’s due in significant part to population demographics and the smaller number of younger “new workers”.
Some leaders “get it” but many continue to miss the big picture and have no plans for how to address these issues into the future. As the UC Riverside study showed, California politicians have made things worse by making it more difficult to hire some types of workers and reducing flexibility for both workers and employers.
