ER Doom Loop; thoughts on anecdotal/data
Howdy, y'all. I'm a bitter, cynical, and disaffected ER Nurse who made the stunning and incomprehensible decision to go into academia and get my doctorate, figuring it was slightly less machoistic then going into politics to try and make things better in emergency medicine.
Anyway, back during the Delta surge, I posited publicly that our ER vets (MD and RN), who were already thinning to a worrying level, would hold on through COVID and then leave the profession for good. This would mean we would increasingly have "babies training babies" as tenured and experienced staff leave, taking their decades of practical experience with them. Anecdotally, that seems like exactly what happened, but of course, in research, anecdote is not data. I know, I know, the way things are going in this country, that's a stunning admission to make; but, alas. Unfortunately, the data seems to back this up to a worrying level, which I think would come to no surprise to anyone in this forum. But while I'm having my math checked (which, had I known how much math would be involved... at one point, I took a break and ran to grab a sandwich from Sheetz and found myself behind a logging truck and wished openly for Final Destination 3 to take place just so I didn't have to do another goddamn SPSS syntax run), I was curious for anecdotal thoughts while I'm hunting biostatisticians.
This is technically a nursing workforce paper I'm working on here but clearly the dynamics affect everyone working ED, and the data already established shows clearly that nurse burnout is correlated with physician turnover at the hospital level. So: are you seeing the same pattern from your end? Senior staff exiting earlier than they used to, knowledge transfer carried by people who themselves still need mentorship, defensive workup patterns from less-experienced clinicians compounding boarding and crowding? My guess is yes but I'd rather hear it than guess it.
Appreciate y'all!