Health care worker shortages are a national problem.
But Hampton Roads is set to age faster than the state and the nation, driving a greater need for more health care providers over the next decade.
The supply of new nurses in the region, for instance, is expected to fall short of demand by 139 new nurses annually, according to projections from Old Dominion University’s Dragas Center.
A statewide effort by nonprofit Claude Moore Opportunities wants to fill those gaps by developing stronger regional networks of educators and employers.
Dr. Cynthia Romero is coordinating the Hampton Roads effort. Romero is the director of the Brock Institute for Community and Global Health, a part of the Macon and Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at ODU.
WHRO talked to Romero about recruitment challenges and the new initiative.
WHRO: First, can you give us a 50,000-foot view of how health care worker shortages impact people?
Cynthia Romero: We see right here in Hampton Roads that there are some significant burdens of conditions like cancer, like chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension, infant mortality, maternal mortality that are impacting our population that should be preventable or that should be addressed.
We should be doing better to help improve the quality of life and certainly the health and wellness of our population. And the way we need to do that, first and foremost, is to improve the health care workforce so that we have the workforce to have the health care system to keep people healthy and well, but also to diagnose conditions early and to get the treatments that they need to live as healthy a life as possible.
We have so many unique and strong assets, such as the multiple major hospitals and health systems, we have a medical school, we have a newly created joint school of public health, we've got wonderful universities and community colleges, and we've got some growing and reputable employers who make this great ecosystem that just needs coordination, alignment and collaboration.
WHRO: What are the biggest barriers you've seen in attracting people to the medical field?
CR: Oftentimes youth and young adults may not be aware of the expansive number of opportunities that there are, but I also think that there may not be easy ways to access (those opportunities). Maybe individuals, families, communities may not be aware of how to start pursuing a career in those pathways.
So what we are hoping is through this combined effort, this regional approach, is to even partner with our school systems and community partners across the region to talk about not just the doctors, psychologists, nurses but also the technicians, the assistants and the aides and therapists that are opportunities that are good paying jobs but also provide job security.
WHRO: How much is COVID-19 still impacting shortages and ongoing recruitment?
The COVID pandemic caused us to really see the tremendous result of the workforce getting sick, the population getting sick, plus the extreme burnout because of the volume, the sheer volume and the complexities of patients coming into the hospital.
We have not recovered from that. We definitely have not recovered from that and I think there is also some part of fear, even among some of the youth, that saw the risks of being exposed to infectious diseases like that, being exposed to environments that are fraught with burnout and the risk of just being stressed all the time.
We are trying to address that now and when we look at our health care delivery system, it is built on and implemented by human beings. To be able to leverage the technology and other enhancements to say 'how can we help human beings deliver the care that, really, only human beings can deliver, but with the support of the technologies and artificial intelligence?' That's the cutting edge.
WHRO: There's a push in broader workforce development to capitalize on the region's population of skilled veterans and those just getting out of the military. How do they fit into this?
CR: Claude Moore Opportunities really focuses on regional collaborative approaches that really support flexible education as well as providing appropriate training to be able to offer career opportunities, good paying jobs that will also improve the health of the individuals, families and communities in our region.
One of the newest initiatives that we have started is the medic and corpsman initiative.
We know that there are many active military and those who transitioned to veteran status that have tremendous experiences, skills and training from their time in the military that, oftentimes, they can easily just step into a civilian role that is very similar to what they had while they were in the service.
So what we are doing is facilitating the conversation to see where we can better match the skills training and experiences that they had in the military, see how we can connect them to the civilian equivalent or to help support them with the additional education and training to step into those that require specific credentials and then leverage that opportunity for them to help contribute to the health workforce.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
