Half A Million Health Care Workers Have Called It Quits Since Feb. 2020
Employment figures continue to be underwhelming in the health care industry: In April, the number of jobs fell by an estimated 4,100 from the prior month. And overall health care employment is down 542,000 since last winter.
Modern Healthcare:
Healthcare Employment Remains Sluggish As Pandemic Continues
April brought more underwhelming employment news for healthcare employment, with nursing homes and hospitals continuing to shed jobs. Preliminary jobs numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show the number of jobs in healthcare dipped by an estimated 4,100 in April from the prior month, largely because the agency revised upward its preliminary March total by 19,100. Although healthcare employment gains have been underwhelming in recent months, the industry's April employment total of 16 million jobs was still much higher than its 14.9 million jobs in April 2020, the height of the pandemic's first wave. Healthcare employment is down 542,000 since February 2020. (Bannow, 5/7)
Axios:
U.S. Nursing Home Employment Is Way Down
Health care employment in the U.S. remained sluggish last month with a drop of about 19,500 nursing and residential care facility jobs, according to the latest labor report. It's the latest sign of the lingering economic hardship the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked on health care and, in particular, on the nursing home industry. (Reed, 5/10)
Stat:
Why Health Tech Companies Are Investing So Heavily In Care Teams
Kristen Campbell often felt like she was treating patients without all the pieces of the puzzle in front of her. As a clinical dietician at a large medical center, she usually had 15 minutes to run through their medical history and squeeze in a new diet and exercise plan. It was only after taking a job with a virtual diabetes company — and joining a larger team of providers for patients — that she felt like she could see the whole picture. (Brodwin, 5/10)
In other news about health care personnel —
The New York Times:
Online Cheating Charges Upend Dartmouth Medical School
Sirey Zhang, a first-year student at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, was on spring break in March when he received an email from administrators accusing him of cheating. Dartmouth had reviewed Mr. Zhang’s online activity on Canvas, its learning management system, during three remote exams, the email said. The data indicated that he had looked up course material related to one question during each test, honor code violations that could lead to expulsion, the email said. (Singer and Krolik, 5/9)
The Baltimore Sun:
‘The Spirit Of Nursing’: During National Nurses Week, Maryland’s Nurses Reflect On COVID Fight
During a video meeting Friday, scores of people in scrubs and surgical masks populated grainy little boxes on the screen — nurses, assistants and respiratory therapists from Sinai Hospital in Northwest Baltimore. The nursing staff was attending a second virtual Nurse of the Year awards ceremony, one of a range of events organized by LifeBridge Health in recognition of National Nurses Week, which began Thursday. At Maryland hospitals, the celebrations offered an opportunity to reflect on being a nurse on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, just as many are starting to move on from the urgency. The theme was caring for the caregiver. (Mann, 5/9)
In obituaries —
Boston Globe:
Eli Broad’s Medical Research Legacy Will ‘Touch Almost The Whole World’
Among scientists around the world, Eli Broad’s name will forever be tied to the role the institute he founded played in helping the Boston and Cambridge area emerge from the global pandemic, and the foundation it provided for researchers who are seeking to identify and contain variants of the Covid-19 virus. But Broad, who died April 30, also will be remembered by families, such as the Chakrabartis in Cambridge, for what the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has done on an individual level, bringing the intellectual clout of a major research institute to bear on a rare illness. (Marquard and Saltzman, 5/8)
The Courier-Journal:
Appalachian Health Care 'Hero' Eula Hall, A Mother Of The Mountains, Dies At 93
She was a mother of the mountains. For decades, Eula Hall cared for her people in Appalachian Kentucky, helping heal the sick and give voice to the vulnerable. From the day nearly a half-century ago when she started her Mud Creek Clinic in Grethel until her death on Saturday at age 93, her mission was to improve health in Eastern Kentucky from the ground up. And that was no easy task in one of the most impoverished places in America, where people die of cancer, heart disease, addiction and other ailments at some of the nation's highest rates. She was an Appalachian legend, described as a "saint" by a congressman — recognizable by the halo of gray and white hair framing her face. (Ungar, 5/9)
