Is the medical field understaffed?

If so, what would convince more Americans to get educated in that field -- assuming the aptitude exists, and it would for a few, certainly?

The number of docs in the US is carefully limited by the AMA (American Medical Association) in order to keep salaries very, very high. Until a few years ago, the AMA was the largest spender of lobbying money in Washington.

And even with those limitations, many of us still find people past their prime, if not outright quacks...

One would think the AMA would keep quality levels high depending on what the tasks involved, but to keep salaries inflated?

Medical schools keep a tight rein exactly how many MDs they graduate, and in what disciplines...

Affluent places and the suburbs get their pick of MDs and in such places there can be a glut of doctors, but rural and urban places with less $$ to offer have to do without.

At the same time we get UHC, there will have to be a reckoning about how we fund medical education and how many people get into medical school.

Not all doctors are buggers, obviously. Like any other hegemony, however, it's going to have to be dismantled and reassembled into something more useful to society.

although, I understand some see private patients on the side.

yes, HALF, because of brutal working conditions. If you want to improve staffing, you're going to have to change the focus of the whole system so that nurses aren't the ones consistently caught in the middle and eating all the shit in a system that only sees them as annoying drags on its profitability.

Hell YES, health care is understaffed. It's dangerously understaffed and the problem lies 100% with the incredibly cruel medical system in this country that tries to withhold care from sick people and abuses all the people who do deliver that care when it absolutely has to pay out.

The problem isn't so much having too few people enter the field. The problem is not retaining them because the system is hostile to them.

docs in the UK stated they wouldn't want to work under our system -- having to put insurance co's above care, etc. these things matter. people don't go into medical fields purely for the money -- when they unable to perform their profession with integrity, the best ones leave.

Thanks Warpy. No One will ever no how hard nurses work. Does this make sense? (in our system) to penalize the people that are working the hardest? (scratching head..pondering) No- No Way! Look at CEO Pay. May I ask one question? (Then I'll go away, I promise.) Why does Health Care Reform mean dumping un-ending crap on the RN's? Oh ya, I forgot, the Corporations are making money, the hospitals are making money, and everyone else remotely connected is making money. So the RN's should shut up and work harder? Ahhh. ok? So why does it figure that, the Hospital Administrators and the CEO's are making millions , while the RN's have to work their ass off with no raise? Why are those connected to the "Top", making money, while the rest of the worker bees are slaving their ass off? Why.. Why.. Why. I give up. So here is the answer.... (Be still and know Grasshopper. The reign of the terrible King George can not last forever.. his Karma will meet him in Crawford, Tx, and he will suffer a painful retribution. He will suffer a right inguinal strangulated Hernia while clearing brush. He will then cease to be a pain in the ass.

at 7am when we've worked 12 hours straight all night running from one critical patient's room to another. It isn't right, and it isn't ethical.

What a frigging joke.
My former floor alone had at least a 80% turnover rate in a year, I remember thinking at the time "soooo, are they just not going to acknowledge our floor? Are our numbers going to be hidden?"

Turns out what they did was present to the magnet people all the Filipino nurses that the facility has brought over, told the magnet people everything that they have done for them (getting them housing near other Filipino co-workers, teaching them how to set up banking accounts, getting their kids in school ,helping newcomers get integrated into our community etc...). Brought a large group of them to the "meet the magnet people breakfast". The magnet people ooh'd and ahh'ed and the next thing you know, we are told our hellhole now has magnet status.
WTF??????
Did it dawn on ANY of the magnet surveyors to ask "why do
you have to go OUTside the country to get nurses? Where are the local nurses? Why are THEY not flocking to your facility and staying here". After all, that IS what magnet status is all about...keeping and retaining nursing staff.

If the magnet people truly wanted to find out which facility deserves their status, just go to Human Resources and ask for the entire list of who has left in the previous year and how many new hires (or how little new hires) were gotten. But then they wouldn't be able to give ANY facility magnet..OURS sure as hell would not have gotten it!!!


Just like when a place says that they are JACHO certified. Up til recently, every hospital KNEW what date the JACHO people would be in their facility so they put their ducks in a row, drill the staff, fix staffing for the time that the surveyors will be the building. And then as soon as the surveyors are gone, all the problems return. That was the only good thing about working on the days/nights that JACHO was to be in the building..we actually had decent/safe staffing. But the public doesn't know what goes on behind the scenes, all they think is the facility MUST be a good/safe place if JACHO says so. HAH!!

But now JACHO makes scheduled UNannounced visits (supposedly). I do know of one place local where a staff member called them to complain about staffing and they showed up at the facility to investigate in between the hospital's scheduled visits.

The moneychangers in our hospital wanted to cut staffing where I work (newborn nursery) where as you well know, you never know what is going to walk in the door at any given time. We do ship the majority of our sick newborns, however, it takes about 3 hours from birth to helicopter if the need arises, and that is a LONG time when you are understaffed already.
We are already working bare bones and they wanted our supervisor to LAY OFF someone.
They upped our ratios and we don't even meet a1 standards anymore...and their reply was..."SO"?
Needless to say, our supervisor is looking for another job, however, what happens when they find the person who doesn't give a shit that we don't meet the standards and isn't willing to go to the mat?:scared:

It doesn't help when we try to cut each other out of work.


David

but RN's serve their purpose as well.
They are NOT interchangeable, although many hospitals would like for that to be the case and in this day and time, hospitals will use any staffing shortcut available to them if it saves them money.
I wouldn't ever proclaim that I could do the job of a paramedic in the field or in the back of an ambulance and I highly respect that...but on the same token, they can't fully function in my capacity in the ER either.
Since paramedics are cheaper than RN's...hospitals would like NOTHING better than to be able to use them in place of RN's...but you put patient safety at risk in that environment. With that being said, I have worked alongside many paramedics and find their expertise invaluable...however, as I said, you cannot use them to replace RN's.

Paramedics get very specialized training, and we need them in the field. RNs are needed in the ER with their specialized training. Not all ER cases are trauma, and you need to know a lot about a lot of other things to cover ER.

I'm talking about using medics as Techs in the ER to start IVs, assist with CPR, record vitals, inserting Foleys, etc. This can and does make the RNs more efficient. Paramedics don't have the same scope of practice so we can't replace RNs, we can however help make them more efficient.

David

But administration is. That is why the nursing organizations are fighting it.
It has NOTHING to do with you working alongside and helping--Lord knows we need all the GOOD help we can get.
However, what we do not need is an ER staffed with paramedics with an RN or two overseeing it and having to put their licenses on the line.
Because you do understand that in many cases...the buck STOPS at the RN in charge?
Even if the person who screwed up in a lab tech, paramedic, physician, LVN, X-ray Tech, etc? It is ultimately--by law--the responsibility of the RN to oversee that nothing adverse happens to the patient. So THAT is the fight that is being fought...not the fight to deny the ancillary help of the paramedics.

I just wanted to clarify what I was suggesting so people here could better understand the issue. Paramedics would be operating under a physicians license, at least they do in the field. It would be difficult to place the blame on the RN. I haven't heard of it happening anywhere, I'll keep a look out though as that could dramatically change things.

David

since the physician is NOT an employee of the hospital, but rather an independent contractor.

Most of our ER doctors here are employees of the hospital. By law here, Paramedics have to work under physicians license and in the hospital under a nurses supervision. Must be different there. Interesting though.

David

Because the nurse is ultimately responsible for the care of the patient, no matter who is involved in that care.
It is very "odd" that your ER docs are employees of the hospital. That is a rarity these days.

Paramedics have to work under a physicians license. I am a EMS supervisor but that doesn't mean that the paramedics and EMTs are working under my license. Pretty common here for ER docs.

David

I don't know of any hospital staff ER docs. They all have their own independent practices here that the hospital contracts with.

We don't have enough nurses covering the ER as it is, so adding yet another job to their list of supervising a tech means you can give that nurse many more patients to keep track of. I'd worry that things would slip through the cracks with the difference in training.

They can though function quite well in an ER and in a cath lab (those are the 2 main areas of Paramedic service in local hospitals).

David

in the field and to keep people alive in the short term. Nurses have a wider focus and pick up on a great many things the paramedics miss.

Paramedics in the ER would be great when somebody comes in with a progressing MI and needs to be kept on this side of death's door until the cath lab staff comes in. They're not so great when it's an older person who comes in looking ashen and only tells you "I don't feel right." Nurses are educated to take all comers, from croup to green stick fractures to that patient with an MI and to pick up on very subtle signs of changing condition. Paramedics are not.

Paramedics are really on the front lines and should be compensated as such. The wages are criminally low for people who undergo that much personal risk at times in trying to preserve life. However, they are no substitute for an RN, just like an RN is no substitute for a physician.

It's just a case of hospitals looking for the cheapest warm body they can get.

One local hospital uses medics as ER techs and for triage. Well within their scope of practice.

David

You wrote, "They're not so great when it's an older person who comes in looking ashen and only tells you "I don't feel right." Nurses are educated to take all comers, from croup to green stick fractures to that patient with an MI and to pick up on very subtle signs of changing condition."

I know some medics who are great at it and some nurses that are terrible. I also know some nurses who are great at trauma and some paramedics that suck at it. No need to disparage and generalize the training and abilities of medics to make your point, scope of practice sufficiently limits the paramedic in the hospital setting.

David

who are thinking of going into nursing.

because it is such a necessary field. Even if they flee screaming after a few years, the knowledge will still be there and in the community.

However, right now the field is terrible to work in because we have such a terrible system.

of the workplace they will very likely run into, in hospitals anyway.

I am a regional recruiting manager for a long term care company and believe me the nursing shortage is real. The biggest problem...not enough faculty for nursing schools. Many students are wait-listed for up to three years before they can get into schools. The problem? Nurses can make more money in a clinical setting than in academia so very few who are qualified choose to enter teaching. Other areas like physical therapy are also very short.

is necessary to subsidize schools and students so that we can address the doctor and nursing shortage...should bring down costs, malpractice suits.

Right now it's expensive as hell to become a nurse and a real pain in the butt to get admitted even when you have the grades and the recommendations.

Back in the seventies when I went into Nursing, there were scholarships. And tuition and books cost much less, even accounting for inflation.

Maybe if we stopped pouring money down the rat-hole in Iraq, this country could afford to help qualified students get educated as doctors and nurses. I read recently that the average RN is in his or her late forties: the shortage is about to get even worse as they start to retire. I'm less than five years away from that goal myself.

The staff in the multiple ICUs she'd been in were pretty well staffed

Now she's in an LTAC and it takes ten minutes to find her nurse.

I'm going to guess that more money would attract more medical personnel.

Not bad.

I've seen patients with trach's decannulate themselves in the middle of the night and died before the nurse made their 4 hour rounds.
It happens more than you would want to ever believe.:(

I was doing my best to do my job, except, I did not like the way that the seniors were sedated, ALL THE TIME.

Their acuity and patient ratios are much less than in the actual hospital settings.
That has nothing to do with the nursing shortage...it has to do with greedy whores at the money trough in the CEO offices.

(yes they are voting Obama...can't abide Hillary)

What may drive him from his practice is the sheer futility of trying to be a good family doctor to low-income folks, and folks with otherwise difficult situations, partly due to the insanity of the health insurance system.

He's having a tough time, financially and emotionally. I don't wonder any more why more good people don't become family doctors.

It seems there are plenty of cosmetic surgeons and similar specialties, though.

One of mine is pre-med and is a very compassionate person, should make a good doctor one day.

However, the cost of tuition is astronomical to say the least. I do believe that is why many by-pass any kind of med degree in this day and age.

It's hard out there in primary practice. Places like WV and Michigan and the rest of the rust belt are even harder to practice in. Can't keep the lights on if no one can pay the bill.

Thanks. I see you understand. The problem for him is that the people he most wants to serve, are the ones who can't help him keep the lights on. And the local politics are such that some people aren't keen on uppity outsiders coming in and changing the way of things, if you know what I mean, and that causes a different set of problems. (I just read the thread about "the problem with West Virginia" written by a native, and it sounds about right.)

Of course, just to let him know, several hospitals and practices are hiring up here in Michigan. One community right on Lake Michigan is desperate for FPs--desperate! We interviewed with them in Hubby's third year of residency, and they put us up in a condo right on the lake and paid for my mom and her hubby to come to watch the kids, all food and gas, and everything for the whole weekend. They've lost 6 of 9 FPs in the last year and a half (retirement, moving, etc.) and are dying. I'd bet they'd cover all moving costs and more.

... the more likely he or she will be located in an urban area. I suppose that makes economic sense because they work at hospitals that draw from surrounding rural areas. Smaller, non-urban hospitals often don't have a large enough patient base to keep specialists in business.

Meanwhile, general practioners, family medicine doctors, ob/gyns and others who offer basic care for a variety of patients are thinly spread out over the rest of the country. In some areas they are few and far between.

I can understand why recent medical school grads (in any field of medicine) would gravitate toward urban areas since those practices are often better paying ... and making money is a vital interest of most medical grads because they often graduate with a whopping load of debts to pay off. Some states offer programs where the students agree to work in a medically under-served area for a specific period of time in exchange for cancelling studnet loan debts.

company that takes care of mentally challenged people that has chronic under staffing problems. the pay is 10 an hour which is way to low to attract qualified help. right now they are short over 20 people and they will be lucky if they can get 5 to last over 3 months....

Sometimes the patients can be physically abusive, among other problems. Burn-out can occur quickly.

Sometimes the patients can be physically abusive, among other problems. Burn-out can occur quickly.

In my mid-forties, after 20+ years in hi-tech, I've decided to go back to school starting this fall. I'll be training to become a respiratory therapist. I thought about nursing, but decided it wasn't quite what I wanted. I'm sick of having my job accomplish nothing more than adding to a corporation's bottom line. I decided I wanted to do something that actually helps real people. Besides, they can't outsource direct patient care. They can very easily outsource my current job.

Some facilities will let you do on-the-job training (depending on how motivated YOU are and how understaffed THEY are).
The majority of RT's that I know graduated from there...and are excellent practitioners.

http://www.independence.edu/Programs/HSASRespiratoryTherapy.php

In Massachusetts. I'll be training at a local community college. But thanks for the suggestion.

that affiliates and works with most of the hospitals across the country.
Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

The AMA heavily restricts the number of people admitted to med school every year. They don't want too many doctors flooding the market and lowering prices.

But I'm sure doctors will still defend the limit, certainly all lawyers are making under minimum wage with all the lawyers that are being cranked out.

Academics make half of what other doctors make, so it's hard to find enough to teach in the med schools as it is, so classes would be bigger, standards would be harder to keep up, and people would graduate who have no business touching patients or reading charts.

Sure, there are great people who don't get into med school, but if you're really determined to be a doctor, you'll get in somewhere.

Someone I know ended up going to med school in Mexico because he couldn't get into a med school here.

They do the same with veterinary schools, from what I hear. The number of students admitted to vet schools is strictly limited so there aren't too many veterinarians. More vets would mean more competition. Some of my kids' friends switched their majors when they learned how tough it would be to get into veterinary school.

Like mine says, it's like med school but covering many species, not just one. You don't want someone who can't handle the load and the work once they get out in that field, either.

They would be hard pressed to get into a nursing program.

Nursing instructors have left their jobs b/c they are so underpaid. No instructors = no classes = dwindling number of accepted nursing student applicants.

Couple that with the current baby boomers in nursing who are going to be retiring over the next several years, the shortage is going to get worse before it ever gets better.

Then we have the scores of nurses like me. I left the hospital setting last year and am never going back. Switched to an outpatient clinic setting, Mon thru Fri, 8am-4:30 pm, weekends/holidays off.

are on the line when they are supervising their students in clinical rotations. There is a limit as to how many they can supervise safely. It may be a minor consideration, but it is there.

We have 2.4 physicians per 1,000 people. I think the OECD average is 3.0 or higher, which means Europe has at least 20% more doctors per capita.

Like others have said, the AMA controlling how many people can become physicians plays a role. With nursing there is no shortage of people who want to become nurses, but there isn't enough room in the schools to teach them all. So the majority are turned away. And alot of the nurses in the field leave due to being overworked and treated poorly.

With nursing I'd be more worried about finding ways to keep them in the field.

Yes, the AMA, through some other groups, restricts the numbers that get into med school. They do that for the salary issue (salaries for primary care docs are stagnant and have been for a few years), and they also do it to make sure that the best candidates get in. Would you want just anyone to get into med school? Where should the cut-off be? I've known great people who didn't get into med school because their grades and test scores weren't high enough. They went to grad school, taught for awhile, kept working on the test scores, and most of them eventually got in, so it's not so restrictive as to be impossible if you're driven enough.

Once you get into med school, even more drop out. It's an insane system. When Hubby was in med school, one of his profs told his class that the new curriculum covered ten times the amount of info he had when he was in med school (he'd saved everything and did a direct comparison). Ten times the info in the same amount of time. You have to be able to read 3000 pages of material in 6 weeks, spend hours in the dissection and histo labs, go to class six days a week, follow your preggers patient, take your two elective classes and pass them--and pass the test at the end of the unit with a high enough grade to move on to the next one. Not everyone can do that, nor should they.

Once you graduate med school, even more drop out in residency. They do the math and realize that you can work fewer hours as a lawyer and make the same or more money with a medical degree as well. They go into bio businesses or back into research and make more money with fewer hours. Not only that, but other jobs don't require you to deal with bodily fluids, violent patients, working 34 hours straight with no breaks, all the while scared to death you're going to hurt someone and get sued.

Once you're done with residency, you have to pay back the debt. When Hubby graduated from residency, he owed $175,000 in med school loans. It does limit which job you take, then. In rural areas, cost of living might be cheaper, but pay is often lower, too. If the community hospital sucks and you have terrible doctors to refer your patients to (plus an old boys club of everyone protecting everyone else, even though many don't deserve that protection), it makes the big city hospital look better. We chose to stay in a smaller area, though not technically underserved (so we can't get the loan assistance from the feds), mostly so we wouldn't have to move right away and try to pay down our debts as much as possible. If we'd moved elsewhere, Hubby would be making more, but our cost of living would be higher, too, so we're quite happy with where we are.

Nurses are seriously understaffed (deliberately so by hospital administrators most of the time), and they get treated like crap too damn often. I've known too many wonderful, hard-working nurses who've left the profession, unable to take it anymore. I can't blame them at all--nursing school is just as hard as med school these days, but when you're given 12-15 very ill patients, stacks of paperwork, and then asked to work an extra shift just this once one time too many, working elsewhere looks better and better.

The reality is, the medical system is entirely broken. Everyone in it admits it. The only reason more patients aren't dying is because of dedicated nurses and doctors and MAs and PAs and NPs and therapists working their asses off to keep people alive, doing everything they can to fight the broken system. Why would any young person go into that mess?

No offense intended. :) Very informative and first-hand, but scary. :scared:

My Son plans on following his desire to be a physician/surgeon and is highly driven.....but I worry so much about the "what if's" as you clearly stated.

My hubby was a nurse's aid in nursing homes from his junior year of high school on through college to pay for college. He didn't go in without knowing how messed up things already were, and that helped him survive.

Btw, Hubby went to Case Western in Cleveland. Best med school anywhere. :)

and easing of my mind. :)

My Son is interning for an Orthopaedic surgeon in a few weeks and is excited. He's also taking EMT courses aside from college studies. His dream is to go to Case, as well. Small world, isn't it? :)

He's extremely driven and gets involved in anything medical right now, almost to the point of having no life. What concerns me is the fact that throughout high school he had some severe medical problems and couldn't participate in anything on the side, as he had medical appt's daily. He still has some problems, but won't let them interefere with what he's always wanted to do. Hopefully, those few years in high school won't hurt him in the long run.

Now I know who to look to for advice in the future. ;)

On Edit: Morning Spelling.

That means that he knows what it's like to be a patient with a chronic health problem, which some admissions people see as a real asset because it means he will take the whole patient into account and have a better bedside manner. CWRU SOM loves that kind of thing, so make sure he puts it in his application essay.

If he wants to ever talk with my hubby, let me know. Hubby loves to get kids to shadow him and write up application letters and such, especially if they're applying to Case. ;) Of course, Hubby will try to get him to go into internal medicine, like he does everyone, but it might help to have shadowing a CWRU grad and a letter in his application. We're up in Michigan, though, so I don't know how it would work out.

I just mentioned this to my Son and he wished you and your husband lived here, or at least closer. :)

Since this isn't my field, I wasn't sure as to whether mentioning his chronic health problems would have a negative impact on Case or not. He told me to tell you that he isn't interning yet, but as you stated....shadowing.

Hubby loves Cleveland and never would've left if I hadn't put my foot down. I'm a Michigander (MSU fan, just to be clear ;) ) born and bred, and I had to move us back up here. We're not that far away, though, should he want to spend a day or two following Hubby from practice to practice and hospital to hospital.

Since the 1980s-90s I think the U.S. and elsewhere have lost a lot of potential medical personnel to other fields like finance, engineering, and IT where they can make good money, work fairly regular hours, not be on call, and not get their hands dirty.

As a bystander I obvserved the process of nurses at a top medical center unionize with SEIU and it was ugly. Management brought in professional union busters to try to derail it but the nurses eventually succeeded.

Regarding medical school, we really need more government investment in MD programs (especially for primary care physicians and family doctors). A few friends of mine have gone into the medical profession with dreams of making big bucks, but when they start to look at the costs of malpractice insurance premiums, they get turned off. Contrary to what many Republicans are touting on tort reform, that isn't the case.

A lot of medical school students now are responsible for much more material in practically the same amount of time as medical school students that studied in the 60s, 70s and 80s, so the dropout rate is higher now. Medical schools should seriously consider lengthening the required amount of study for medical school students to ensure that the medical school students that are enrolling are actually graduating once enrolled and not dropping out because they can't retain 3,000 pages of material within a course of six weeks.

A friend of mine just graduated from medical school a year ago, and needless to say, she's in a mountain of debt ($125,000+). If we could invest more money in loan and debt-forgiveness programs for physicians that are subject to longer periods of study in medical school and then require that a portion of that loan forgiveness is accompanied with a life stipend upon finishing their service, this would really influence more to go into the field. There are a lot of things that can be done to thwart this. The AMA, though, has more of a vested interested in ensuring that it isn't.

how difficult an Associates Degree Nursing for the RN license was, primarily because of the amount of material covered. And thenpreparing for clinicals on top of that. The reading was more extensive than some masters courses I had taken in neuroscience and business administration (what a fucking joke that second masters track was.)

Frankly, it is hard for me not to discourage others from going through nursing school or med school.

and we had a lot of older students going into second careers in my class who said the same thing about their earlier college experience. The theory is that if you can survive nursing/medical school, you can survive anything.

It's only in the real world that you realize that hospitals are too stingy to provide assistive equipment and believe any 120 pound nurse can easily lift a 300 pound patient with "good body mechanics." It's only in the real world that you confront administrative policies that say management can force you to work extra 12 hour shifts any old time at their convenience, and that you need to kiss your personal life goodbye because there is no way to plan anything, even a trip to a public park with a picnic basket. It's only in the real world that you confront the reality of assault on the job and management that frowns on any nurse who presses charges against a patient or his/her family because of the bad publicity--hey, you're covered by workman's comp, what's the big deal?

It's only in the real world that has you dragging booty after the fifth 12 hour shift in the row that had you wishing for roller skates that gets you called into some suit's office for a stern lecture on doing more with less.

The whole system is broken, top to bottom, because no one is taken care of, from housekeeping staff to patients through specialist physicians, in the rush to contain costs to maximize PROFIT.

If we got rid of the profit motive and put the emphasis back on good outcomes, not good billing, it would be a start. Basing medicine on the market system has been disastrous.

and dept head at a major hospital in a major city. She dropped out. Just quit and left it, she was so fucking burned out. She was brilliant. Perfect student in high school, college, one of the best med schools n the US. She hasn't practiced medicine in 7 years, I guess, and has no intention of ever going back.

Memag.com has many articles on burnout.

the more you get paid, the more stress you have to bear. Nothing wrong with it...

Studies have shown the most stressful jobs were those at the very bottom of the ladder. Of course, those people have nowhere to "drop out" to.

definitely

It sure takes them long enough to finally see me. Then again, I'm one of those nasty uninsured Americans who can't afford to actually let them check what probably needs to be checked.

Thank the AMA for that.

If someone really wants to be a doctor, they'll get in somewhere with enough work. We had three friends from college not get in on their first try who all got in after a couple of years of grad school or teaching and getting their MCATs up.

There's tension between the residency programs that want more graduates to cover the load and med schools and academics who think that keeping a lid on the number of students keeps salaries up. There's a movement within the AMA and the residency programs to open up new med schools and expand what's already there, but then there's the problem of staffing them--academics earn far less than their counterparts in practice, so who's going to teach?

there are jobs out there. For the first time ever, here on the East Coast (in Massachusetts of all places) there is a job shortage since I've been in imaging. I've been an Xray tech since 1995 and an MRI tech since 2001 and never have seen it like this. Nobody's hiring. Full-time MRI jobs are few and far between unless you want to go to Boston to work. Everyone is cutting back. Privately owned imaging comapnies are the hardest hit, re-imbursement issues, preapprovals for MRI (insurances want pt's to have ultrasounds, xrays first before an MRI). My company that I work for just laid off two of my co-workers 2 weeks ago. Too many techs and not enough jobs here in Mass, Conn, RI area.

My doctor's office is getting a CT, and I know one practice here in town is expanding their imaging offerings.

in 1995 there were no full-time Xray jobs anywhere. The market goes up and down with supply and demand. We have ALOT of schools out here pumping out new grads. Not too long ago you could pick and choose where you wanted to work. Overtime was always available.
My husband's sister who lives in CA is an RN and she has told me there are TONs of oppurtunities out there. If it weren't so damn expensive.....I'd be tempted.
The job market will change again over here- it always does. People stop going to radiology programs when they hear there's no jobs- and then in a few years we'll have another shortage of techs again. Crazy cycle!

Can I just say thank you, though? A couple of great CT techs got me through both of mine a couple of years back, and I've had several X-rays this year, all with wonderful techs who were kind and didn't rush me (after the first CT found the kidney tumor and all the resultant surgery crap, I have a bit of medical-induced anxiety). You guys are real gems in medicine. :hug:

you're very welcome. You know, I'm not a brainiac or anything, but I pride myself as a MRI/CT tech w/ good patient skills. To me, patient care and patients actually LIKING YOU as a tech is important to creating that sense of trust that allows us to do these procedures. You have no idea how many cranky men out there I've broken down and made them smile. I'm good at sweet-talking you guys into that MRI scanner. And proud of it!

Those scans are so important, but I'll be honest--they're scary. I knew during my first one that something was wrong, that the techs had seen something really bad. They got that particular blank look that anyone in medicine gets on their face when you're SOL and they can't tell you (seen it on Hubby's face more than once). Hubby didn't believe me, but they were never unprofessional for a second and were so kind about my needle phobia and all.

You guys rock! :headbang:

As you have said...it is market driven.

that will become even more acute when universal healthcare becomes a reality.

the system is already straining at the seams, now bring in the 40+ million uninsured into the system and you will have a significant problem.

Solving the problem by adding more medical personnel will take anywhere from 4 to 12 years (depending upon the level of qualification).

Interesting conundrum.

For some reason every doctor's office seems to have at least eight women (they're always women for some reason) milling around in the office, presumably all to make appointments and fill out paperwork. Hospital nursing stations always seem to be full of people filling out paperwork of some kind. It takes ten minutes with an office lady to get the insurance organized for 30 seconds of blood drawing. Too few people in medicine are providing patient care and too many are filling out forms.

I forget where I read the study, but I remember one saying that just getting every insurance company to use the exact same billing form would cut billions out of medical costs every year. It's crazy!

it was an insane amount of money that it wasted.

The paperwork is freakin' insane! I will never forget, when in labor with our first, the nurse gets out this huge binder and starts going through it in between contractions. I remember thinking it was the oddest thing--why do paperwork while a patient's in labor? That's what the insurance companies require, though.

why on all those who are busy filling out forms.

the medical industry that has been foisted on us by the capitalists who run our government.

We receive substandard care (those of us who receive care at all) for about triple the expense of any other country. Like all unfettered capitalism in the US, it is extortion and theft. It makes the oligarchs happy though because it perpetually feeds our fear, uncertainty and doubt, the three main veins into which they pump the junk that keeps us all in the underclass.

but doctors don't want to go work in the boonies or bumfuck nowhere. Doctors want to work at state of the art hospitals and practices that allow them to utilize the tools they learned. We need more nurses. We will be needing more doctors as the boomers retire, but that's going to be the case for nearly every industry.