Widespread healthcare workforce exits seen during the pandemic’s initial peak in 2020 “largely recovered” through October 2021 with the exception of long-term care workers and physicians, according to a recently published study of federal labor data.
“The findings of this national cross-sectional study suggest that, despite continued elevated turnover rates among healthcare workers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many groups are on track to recover,” researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Minnesota wrote in JAMA Health Forum. “This study does not suggest mass exits by any particular profession, although growing turnover rates among physicians do support concerns about burnout.”
Among the study’s sample of more than 125,000 healthcare workers, healthcare turnover rates averaged 3.2% during the 15 months prior to the pandemic, increased to 5.6% on average between April and December 2020 and then dipped back down to an average of 3.7% between January and October of 2021, the researchers wrote.
Turnover was consistently lower in hospitals than in all other healthcare settings, whereas workers in ambulatory care settings had both the largest turnover rate increase from April through December 2020 and the greatest recovery from January through October 2021.
Long-term care was the only setting where turnover increased following the pandemic’s onset and then worsened in 2021.
Across all types of healthcare occupations, turnover rates...
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