Is the US About to Experience a Massive Shortage of Healthcare Workers? by Aden Tate for The Organic Prepper
Whether we’re talking about nurses, surgeons, or general practitioners, the US has already experienced a shortage of healthcare workers. Is it about to get worse? We’ve already seen the beginnings of this throughout the past two years.
In Alpine, Texas, the Big Bend Regional Medical Center briefly shut down its labor and delivery unit. Why? Not enough staff.
In Bremerton, Washington, the St. Michael Medical Center – a standalone emergency unit – was experiencing similar staffing shortages. They ended up closing indefinitely as a result.
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And those two locations are not alone. We’re currently seeing doctor’s offices, clinics, and hospitals across the US temporarily shut down due to staffing shortages. [source]
Was COVID the straw that broke the camel’s back?
Compounding the issue is the fact that many medical professionals are truly exhausted. But is that solely the result of a new virus? Last September, the Wall Street Journal ran an article detailing how hospitals have trimmed staff in recent years for budgetary reasons.
Is this exhaustion on the part of health care workers solely an indicator of how bad the virus is? Or were health care workers stretched too thin before COVID hit?
When we watch commercials with exhausted nurses telling everyone to stay home and mask up, is it such a stretch to wonder if perhaps some of this is due to poor management and lack of workers? Not solely due to the virus. Selco wrote previously that it wasn’t the virus we need to worry about, but the system. Is that what we’re seeing? [source]
What is causing the shortage of healthcare workers throughout the US?
Have you ever been forced to wear a mask for 12-hour shifts? It’s absolutely miserable. Dealing with patients can be hard enough at times. (Ask anybody in the healthcare industry ever).
If you want to know what it is really like to work in a COVID ward, Chuck Hudson wrote this piece in 2020. He details the layers of protective gear he and other health care workers had to don just to walk into the rooms. “Very little is talked about…so much to tell. Even the little things that the patients and the staff endure take a huge toll on us.”
Now, imagine on top of that, we now have mandates coming down the line saying workers must be vaccinated or they will no longer be permitted to work there. For many, this is the final straw. They’ve put up with masks and extreme PPE precautions over the past year. And now there are looming mandates that they get a shot? Enough is enough.
We’ve already seen a dwindling of the already small number of healthcare employees throughout the US. I would argue that America’s hospital policies have pushed many of these employees away. As has been excessively noted, long-term mask usage results in headaches, irritability, malaise, and potentially several other adverse health factors.
There are studies from Germany showing that carbon dioxide levels underneath those masks are exponentially more significant than the acceptable level. We’re liable to find out within the next 10+ years the long-term side effects of mask usage.
