Washington Post/KFF Survey: Fully 29 Percent of Healthcare Workers Might Leave the Field

Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare workers are burned out, traumatized, and disillusioned in disturbingly large numbers, a report published in the Washington Post on April 22, and based on a Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll, has found.

Under the headline, “Burned out by the pandemic, 3 in 10 healthcare workers consider leaving the profession,” and the subhead, “After a year of trauma, doctors, nurses and other health workers are struggling to cope,” the Post’s William Wan wrote that, “In wrenching interviews, nurses, doctors, technicians — and even administrative staff and dental hygienists who haven’t directly treated covid-19 patients — explained the impulse to quit and the emotional wreckage the pandemic has left in their lives. It’s not just the danger they’ve endured, they say. Many talked about the betrayal and hypocrisy they feel from the public they have sacrificed so much to save — their clapping and hero-worship one day, then refusal to wear masks and take basic precautions the next, even if it would spare health workers the trauma of losing yet another patient,” he wrote.

The key question in the survey was this: “As a result of the covid-19 pandemic, have you considered no longer working in healthcare, or not?” And 29 percent of respondents said that they’ve considered leaving the field.

Wan wrote that “In wrenching interviews, nurses, doctors, technicians — and even administrative staff and dental hygienists who haven’t directly treated covid-19 patients — explained the impulse to quit and the emotional wreckage the pandemic has left in their lives. It’s not just the danger they’ve endured, they say. Many talked about the betrayal and hypocrisy they feel from the public they have sacrificed so much to save — their clapping and hero-worship one day, then refusal to wear masks and take basic precautions the next, even if it would spare health workers the trauma of losing yet another patient.”

Wan interviewed physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. “Most of us got into this to save lives. But when death is blowing around you like a tornado and you can’t make a dent in any of it, it makes you question whether you’re making any difference,” Megan Brunson, a night-shift nurse in Dallas, told him.

Meanwhile, “The Post-KFF poll found a majority of health-care workers say they feel respected by the general public and patients they interact with. At the same time, about 6 in 10 health-care workers say most Americans are not taking enough precautions to prevent the spread of covid-19, and about 7 in 10 say the United States has done a “poor” or “only fair” job handling the pandemic.”

There is a broader context to this crisis, Want noted. “Experts warn the looming lack of medical professionals could make health care more expensive, less accessible and worse in quality as those remaining are asked to do more in an already overtaxed system,” he wrote. “According to studies and industry estimates, as many as 1 million nurses could retire by 2030 and the country could be short an estimated 130,000 doctors by then. The large numbers of doctors and nurses wanting to quit are also the early warnings of festering, unaddressed psychic wounds among health-care workers.

If left untreated, experts worry they could lead to widespread incidents of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, substance abuse and suicide for a group that has already sacrificed so much to get the nation through this pandemic.”

Interestingly, the Post/KFF survey found that, the younger the cohort, the higher the percentage of healthcare workers who reported feeling burned out. While only 27 percent of healthcare workers ages 65 and over reported feeling burned out, 43 percent of those aged 50-64 said so; 57 percent of those aged 40-49 said so; 61 percent of healthcare workers aged 30-39 said so; and fully 69 percent of healthcare workers aged 18-29 reported feeling burned out.