Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We'll end today by continuing our call-in series for this week on your lived experience in jobs facing labor shortages. Yesterday, it was for teachers. Tomorrow, it's going to be for police officers. Today, the call-in is for anyone who has left your job in healthcare or your suggestions for attracting enough workers to fill the country's needs.

Nurses, home health aides, paramedics, or anyone else working in the healthcare field in any way, why did you leave the profession or even if you didn't, why do you think there are shortages and what do you think needs to be done to get enough people to do these jobs? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Again, nurses, home health aides, paramedics anyone else working in the healthcare fields, why did you leave the profession or even if you didn't, why do you think there are shortages and what do you think needs to be done to get enough people to do these jobs?

212-433-WNYC. If you're not yet aware of these shortages, listeners, if you've been lucky enough not to have them affect your own healthcare, listen to this from a story in US News and World Report last month. It says, "Staffing shortages are now the nation's top patient safety concern, forcing Americans to endure longer wait times when seeking care even in life-threatening emergencies or to be turned away entirely," according to ECRI, a nonprofit patient safety organization quoted in the article.

Then it says, "In a letter sent in March to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the American Hospital Association called the workforce shortage hospitals were experiencing a national emergency projecting the overall shortage of nurses to reach 1.1 million by the end of this year." It's not just nurses, this says, professionals from medical lab workers to paramedics are in short supply.

That's from US News with a national angle. Here's a local take from a Channel 13 report on the home healthcare shortage in New Jersey. It says, "One report shows the number of home health aides in New Jersey plunged from about 60,000 pre-pandemic to 50,000 last year, down more than 16%." It quotes Nancy Fitterer of the Home Care & Hospice Association of New Jersey saying, "They can get a better salary at Starbucks, at Target, at Amazon." There's that.

There was this New York take on the nursing shortage in The New York Times last month. This says, "In New York State, the shortage is at an all-time high," said Matthew Allen, a registered nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital and a board member of the New York State Nurses Association. He's quoted saying, "It's just historic, more than it's ever been before." Noting that as of last week, so that would have been early July, Mount Sinai's Hospital network alone had 771 unfilled registered nurse and nurse practitioner positions. There's some more on that.

Nurses, home health aides, paramedics, or anyone else working in the healthcare field, why did you leave the profession or even if you didn't tell us why you think there are shortages and what you think needs to be done to get enough people to do these jobs? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. As for what might be done about the shortages, a report from McKinsey on the nursing shortage this year said, for example, getting to the right page, "Attracting more people to nursing roles by casting nursing as an attractive and exciting career opportunity."

That just sounds like public relations. It also says, "Increasing the number of academic and clinical spots. Even if there was a huge increase in high school or college students seeking nursing careers, they would likely run into a block that says there are not enough spots in nursing schools." It also says, "Reimagining clinical education. For example, shorter programs may jump-start interest," the McKinsey report says.

For example, Portland Community College through a Title III Rises Grant offers a 2-week, 20-hour course called, On the Ramp to Healthcare, at no cost to participants. That, of course, doesn't train a nurse or home health aide in that shortened amount of time, but it is what they call an on-ramp at the community college level and maybe gets people moving toward those things. That from McKinsey.

Listeners, you tell us. Nurses, home health aides, paramedics, or anyone else working in the healthcare field, why did you leave the profession or even if you didn't, we want your thoughts on why you think there are shortages and what you think needs to be done to get enough people to do these jobs? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer and we'll take your calls right after this.

Brian Lehrer on WNYC. In this week in which we're closing the show every day with a call-in from people who are working or have worked in different jobs for which there are now labor shortages, it's the healthcare fields today. Nurses, home health aides, paramedics, anyone else, why did you leave a profession or even if you didn't, why do you think there are shortages and what do you think needs to be done to get enough people to do these jobs? Our lines are full. David in Queens, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

David: Thank you for taking my call. Background information. I've been a registered nurse for 36 years. I'm still working at it, even though I should have probably retired years ago. I worked in many different fields, from intensive care to post-anesthesia recovery, emergency room, and right now I'm just taking it easy in a nighttime job, but still working full-time in the hospital.

There's several things. Number one is that healthcare is an industry now. Just look at some of the big names. They're the big university systems. They're run as businesses. The human element has been taken out of it. In nursing, especially. Nursing is a human-human interaction.

Brian Lehrer: We heard the same thing from a lot of our teacher callers yesterday on why teaching is a less attractive profession for some than it used to be. Can you give me an example, David? Yes, there's all this consolidation, corporatization in certain respect of healthcare, how does it affect your day-to-day experience interacting with patients as a nurse?

David: The most obvious thing is what makes it not human-human interaction is the fact that there's a computer have been placed between the nurse and the patient. The computer basically benefits two people. It benefits the insurance companies who are the payers and the lawyers. People are taking instructions from the computer rather than relying on experience. That's a big part of it. The nurse has to refer to the computer, not to the patient, as to what's going on.

Brian Lehrer: Doctors talk about this too, how even as they're doing patient care, they have to input so much data because of the current virtual infrastructures or digital infrastructures around medicine that it becomes so much a part of their job of their workday and they don't like it. David, thank you. I think we're going to hear something similar from Christine in Andover, New Jersey. Hi, Christine. You're on WNYC. Thanks so much for calling in.

Christine: Hi. I'm a nurse. I retired three years ago. I was a nurse in a hospital for 44 years. That man is right on who just spoke to you. The hospitals are corporations. They don't listen to their nurses anymore that work on the floors.

Brian Lehrer: About what, Christine?

Christine: About day-to-day care. Management doesn't touch patients anymore, so they don't really understand what nurses are going through. They really don't. It's so sad. In the beginning, when I first started nursing, they listened to us. If we said something's not going to work, they listened and they tried to help us and adjust things, but they don't listen anymore. It's so sad.

Brian Lehrer: Christine, thank you for your call, unfortunately. Margot in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Margot.

Margot: Hi. Good morning. I've been on both sides of this because we had health aides for my parents and I actually was certified as a home health aide. It's I think a couple of different things. The training that the home health aides get, at least here in Manhattan, is so subpar. The aides' information was from the 1980s. They actually showed a video that had one of the PBS anchors as an actor in it. The training is so bad that the people who come in, they either are not capable of doing the job or they get so frustrated that they can't do the job, but because there is such a boots-on-the-ground need, they certify anybody.

I see people, they don't know how to use a Hoyer lift. They don't know how to roll the patient. They don't know how to lift them safely. The level of incompetence gets them dismissed from the agency, so they agency shop, and then the clients have to also agency shop. From the other end, from the actual home health aide end, there's a lot of-- you deal with people with dementia, with illnesses, they're going to be crabby, they're going to be angry, they're going to be sad, but a lot of that is transferred to the aide. That really just breaks down your will to do it every day. I think those are some of the major things, at least in the home health aide aspect.

Brian Lehrer: That would've been the case, the last thing you said, always, I imagine. Why would people be leaving the field now? Maybe it's only pandemic-related. People didn't want to be in close quarters because of COVID, or do you think it's more?

Margo: I think the pay rate has a lot to do with it. I think that when people reach their Peter principle and they are put into people's homes to take intimate care of sick people and they reach the point where they can't do it, the client and the client's family can't have that because people get injured, people get sick. Somebody I know right now who just got put on home healthcare in March now has a massive pressure sore, which is a bit sore, that none of the aides they're not turning, or they're not taking care of it, they're not even charting.

Home health aides they're supposed to chart every day everything that goes on. That's a state mandate. They don't bother to do that anymore.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you describing it as dissatisfied providers, dissatisfied providees. Thank you, Margo. Phil in Connecticut in New York City Paramedic. Hi, Phil. You're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Phil: Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my call. Thanks, Brian. Can you hear me well? I'm actually on my way to work.

Brian Lehrer: I can hear you just fine. We got you real clear, Phil. Yes.

Phil: I think your early callers, Dave, I think it was, nailed one aspect that covers healthcare in general. I think EMS, and I'll speak for New York City, which I've been working for over a quarter of a century. It's another layer, but it pretty much covers all of the EMS nationwide of why people don't go to EMS; just that money is not there, the financial incentives are not there. You look at EMTs, they're not working wages.

You look at paramedics, they're barely working wages, and that you're dependent on working a job and a half, full-time, 40 hours a week. There's no way you can make a living wage in EMS. You're dependent on working multiple municipalities or multiple agencies to make ends meet. In New York City, we are doing about 6,000 911 calls every day. 20 years ago, when I started, 20-plus years ago, we're doing about 2,500 a day. During the pandemic, we're doing about 7,400 a day. Now for the last 2 or 3 months, we've sustained 6,000 and we're down so much staff. It's like we can't cover the 911 calls.

Brian Lehrer: Phil, thank you very much. I hear you. Paramed is not the first call we've ever had on the show talking about paramedic pay. That's for sure. Michelle in Long Branch, who's a doctor, an OBGYN. I didn't know that this would apply to doctors, but Michelle we've got 20 seconds. You're going to get the last word but in a sound bite.

Michelle: All right, Brian, I think the major problem is there's no young people to replace the workforce. In OB we've lost six people in my department out of 14 in the last year. They're aging out and--

Brian Lehrer: Don't young women going into medicine want to be OBGYNs? We have five seconds.

Michelle: My understanding is four out of five residents are subspecializing. They don't want to deliver babies because the lifestyle is miserable.

Brian Lehrer: That has to be the last word. I apologize, but thank you for all your calls on why there are shortages in the healthcare fields. Fascinating.

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