Health care workers quit, suffer various harms during coronavirus pandemic

Since February 2020, nearly 1 in 5 health care workers, or 18 percent, have quit their jobs, according to new poll results from Morning Consult, a global privately held data intelligence company.

The poll, conducted in September among 1,000 U.S. health care workers, also found that 12 percent of workers have been laid off or lost a job, while 19 percent of those who kept them have considered leaving their job and the industry during the pandemic. Twelve percent of those who kept their jobs have considered leaving their job for another health care role, according to the poll.

The poll showed the exodus is primarily driven by the pandemic, insufficient pay or opportunities, and burnout, according to Morning Consult.

“You have physicians, you have nurses, dropping out, retiring early, leaving practice, changing jobs,” Dharam Kaushik, MD, a urologist at the University of Texas Health, San Antonio, told the company. “You’re experiencing loss of manpower in a field that was already short on manpower before the pandemic hit.”

In the poll, 79 percent of health care professionals said shortages have affected them and their workplace.

The poll also found that in September, 51 percent of health care workers reported that their mental health has suffered during the pandemic, while 42 percent said their day-to-day lives have gone downhill and 33 percent expressed concern about the decline of their physical health.

The survey shows that the pandemic’s toll hasn’t abated since January, when the newfound availability of effective vaccines seemed to indicate that the strain on health systems would soon be lifted.

At that time, 46 percent of health care workers said their mental health had suffered, and an equal share said daily life had gotten worse during the pandemic.

Now, medical workers across the country are being thrown back to the fore as the United States faces another crushing wave of COVID-19 hospitalizations. This time, health care workers are burdened with the knowledge that much of the suffering could’ve been prevented.

“The reasons for that burnout have changed multiple times during the pandemic,” said Nassef, also a spokesperson for the American College of Emergency Physicians. “Most recently, it’s a feeling that while things may be better from a vaccination standpoint and from having some treatments for COVID, medicine prior to that was already in trouble.”

Read more about the poll here.

The data is drawn from a poll of 1,000 health care workers and is a follow-up to a January survey and series.