By Natalie Krebs, Iowa Public Radio, Kff Health News
Even according to standards of the Rural Hospital, the Hospital and the County Clinics of Keokuk in southeast Iowa are small.
The 14 -bed hospital, in Sigourney, does not make surgeries or babies. The small 24 -hour emergency room is supervised by two full -time doctors.
CEO Matt Ives wants to hire a third doctor, but he said that finding doctors for a rural area has been difficult from the Pandemic COVID-19. He said several doctors from his hospital have retired since the start of the pandemic, and others have decided to stop practicing certain types of care, in particular emergency care.
Another rural hospital is at the bottom of the road, about 40 minutes by car to the east. Washington County Hospital and Clinics have 22 beds and are experiencing similar personal difficulties. “In recent years, we have not only had the pandemic, but we have had a kind of work as an aging doctor who has retired,” said Todd Patterson, CEO.
The pandemic was difficult for health workers. Many have endured long hours, and stress on the country’s health care system has prompted more workers than usual to leave or retire.
“There is a part of workers who have been lost and who will not come back,” said Joanne Spetz, who heads the Institute for Studies on Health Policy at the University of California-San Francisco. “For many clinicians who have decided and have been able to hold it and work through the pandemic, they have exhausted,” said Spetz.
Five years after the World Health Organization said Covid a world pandemic and the first Trump administration announced a national emergency, the United States faces a crucial shortage of medical providers, below the planned need for an aging population.
This could have lasting effects on care, especially in states such as Iowa with important rural populations. Experts say that the problem has been built for some time, but the effects of the pandemic have accelerated shortages by pushing many doctors above the edge in early retirement or other areas.
“Some of them have managed to live as” do we do through this public health crisis “, then they got out saying:” OK, and now? Now I am exhausted “, said Christina Taylor, president of Iowa Medical Society.
“Iowa is absolutely in the middle of a shortage of doctors,” said Taylor. “It is a real crisis for us. We are actually 44th in the country in terms of patient-medicine ratio. ”
An investigation in 2022 by the centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed a significant leap by health workers who declared that they feel exhausted and wanting a new job, compared to 2018. The number of health care has developed since the start of the pandemic, said Janette Dill, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, but growth did not take place.
“We have an aging population. We have a lot of needs, ”she said.
The association of American Medical Colleges planned last year that the United States faced a shortage of up to 86,000 doctors by 2036 – if legislators do not invest more money in doctors’ training.
These shortages could push more people to ask for care in the ERS when they cannot see a local doctor, said Michael Dill, director of labor studies at AAMC.
“We are already at a point where tens of millions of Americans each year cannot get medical care when they need it,” said Dill (no relationship with Janette Dill). “If the shortage is maintained or still empires, then this problem is getting worse, and it has a negative impact in a disproportionate manner most vulnerable among us.”
Iowa legislators have made the shortage a priority in the current legislative session. They presented bills aimed at increasing the forgiveness of medical students and requesting federal aid to add residence training slots for medical students in the state.
Last year, Governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill which drops the requirement of residence to certain doctors who trained abroad to obtain a medical license. Legislators at least eight other states have approved similar changes.
Patterson, from Washington County Hospital, appreciates that Iowa legislators are trying to increase the pipeline of doctors in Iowa, but said that he did not respond to immediate shortages.
“You have a high school student who graduates right now; they are probably nine to 11 years old to enter the job market as an in-office. This is a long-term problem,” he said.
For nurses, according to labor experts, the national prospects planned are not as disastrous as in recent years.
“Nursing training is back.
But bringing nurses to move to places that need them, like rural communities, will be difficult, she said.
Some rural hospitals of Iowa say that a even larger challenge is to find nurses to hire.
Part of this can be attributed to the pandemic, said Sara Bruns, nurse director of the hospital and clinics of Keokuk County. She recalled that some patients with critical condition died when they could not be transferred to larger hospitals with more advanced intensive care equipment, as these hospitals did not have staff to face more patients.
“We had to make the horrible decision of” you are probably not going to get there, “recalls brown, saying that many patients were then listed like MRN, to” not revive “.
“It has wreaked havoc on many nurses,” she said.
Another problem is to persuade young nurses in the region to stay, while they prefer to live and work in more urban areas, said Bruns.
His hospital is still based on contracts with travel nurses to fill night quarters. This is something that the hospital never had to do before the pandemic, said Bruns. Travel nurses are more expensive, adding stress to the budget of a small hospital.
“I think some people have completely out of nursing,” said Bruns. The pandemic made special ravages “because of the hours they had to work, the conditions they had to work.”
Political decision -makers and health care organizations cannot focus solely on recruitment workers, according to Janette Dill at the University of Minnesota. “You must also hold workers,” she said. “You cannot just recruit new people and then make them be miserable.”
Dill said workers point out that the feeling that patients have been more disrespectful and difficult from the pandemic, and sometimes workers do not feel at work. “By” dangerous “, I mean physically dangerous. I think it’s a very stressful part of work, “she said.
Research has shown that health workers reporting higher levels of professional exhaustion and poor mental health from the pandemic – although the risks decreased if workers felt supported by their managers.
Gail Grimes, a nurse in intensive care at monks, felt more supported by her employer in the worst parts of the pandemic than she does, she said. Some hospitals have offered pay bumps and greater planning flexibility to keep nurses to staff.
“We obtained a better bonus salary,” recalls Grimes. “We obtained these specialized contracts that we could carry out which were often worth our time to be able to enter, miss our families and be there.”
Grimes said she saw nurses leaving Iowa for neighboring states with better average salary. This creates shortages which, according to her, affect the care she gives to her own patients.
“A nurse who takes care of five patients will always be able to provide better care than a nurse who takes care of 10 patients,” she said.
She thinks that many hospitals have simply accepted professional exhaustion as a fact, rather than trying to prevent it.
“It is really very impactful for your mental health when you get home every day and you feel guilty about the things you have not been able to provide to people,” she said.
This article comes from a partnership that includes IPR ,, NPR And Kff Health News .
© 2025 Kff Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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