Question

• Discuss the issue of physician shortage in America. Since half of all medical school first year students are women, how would that fact contribute further to a physician shortage in the future? How would a physician shortage be overcome in the health care delivery system? What is the impact or burden on current physician staffing levels given the estimated 30 million additional people being added to a government mandated insurance plan?

Answer 1

Lack of physicians to treat all the patients in the hospital is termed as physician storage. It is expected that the United States will experience severe shortage of physicians over time. Statistics have indicated that the United States will experience physician storage of 122,000 doctors till the time period of 2032. This is because of the increase in the demand of physicians with limited supply in addition to population growth and higher influx of adult and older patients over the age of 65 years.

It has been estimated that nearly half of all the first year medical students are female which can resolve the issue of physician shortage. Female medical students in the system can optimize the quality of care provided to the patients. This can lead to fewer healthcare burden over time because effective care lead to better treatment and lack of diseases. Occupying female doctors in the system can bring up accountable care, patient-centered treatment and effective work management. Moreover, female doctors are much effective in relating to the hospital nurses. This can lead to open communication and this can thus solve the issue of excess patient load in the hospital by dividing workload.

Physician storage can be overcome by effective management and cooperative activities in the healthcare system. First step of the process would be to increase the efficiency of physicians. This can be done by proper training to the physicians. This training can include the concepts of soft skill development, technological improvement, resilience development and work load management. However, proper workplace improvisations by support systems and open communication can motivate the doctors to perform better. Increasing medicals seats and creating greater opportunities can also resolve the issue of physician shortage.

The burden of delivering quality care to an additional 30 million people in the government mandated insurance plan would increase on the current physician staffing levels. Every hospital have individual staffing levels and this is designed to best suit the requirements of the patients while balancing the workload on the physicians. However, a sudden increase in the patients would lead to physician shortage which will then require the hospital administration to increase their staffing ratio.