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WOMEN IN
MEDICINE

Creating Resiliency

in Health Care By Alan D. Winkler, MHSA

O managing and engaging our workforce. nity. We deal with the challenge daily, but we
ur health care system has a long
history of resiliency, so it was not
have not leveraged the opportunity to its
Although the pandemic has caused both
surprising that various adapta-
the workforce – either temporarily or perma-
tions have been quickly implemented, analyzed male and female health care workers to exit fullest potential.
Medical practices can no longer function in
and adjusted throughout the pandemic. What nently – 76% of that workforce is female. a vacuum of information where processes re-
was surprising was the fragility of the infra- When daycares closed (and continue to open main static over long periods of time. Patient de-
structure undergirding the health care system. and close sporadically) and school became vir- mands are increasing, employees expect pay
As individuals working in health care, we tual, many of our health care workers such as increases, bonuses and benefit enhancement, de-
are often asked to modify our work schedules, medical assistants, x-ray and ultrasound tech- spite the financial strain with which most prac-
assume new responsibilities and balance mul- nologists, and nurses exited to meet other tices are struggling; and dependability is defined
tiple priorities. What we typically aren’t asked family obligations. Turnover within the first day-by-day versus over a year or over a career.
to do is reconstruct a diminishing – and some- six months of employment has skyrocketed, There has never been a more important
times nonexistent – workforce. and each day it becomes more challenging to time for physicians, advanced practice
While much attention has been rightly fo- keep our clinics, ambulatory surgery centers providers (APPs) and administrative staff in
cused on the expanding importance of women and hospitals operational. The stress of provid- medical practices to collaborate. Acquisitions,
in medicine, that focus typically centers ing front-line health care amidst a pandemic changing insurance plan guidelines and
around the increase in female physicians in res- that is stretching close to two years in duration state/federal regulatory changes demand ad-
idency programs in all specialties. It rose from has created both a challenge and an opportu- ditional training and, perhaps most impor-
28.3% in 2007 to 36.3% in 2020, according to
the AAMC's Physician Specialty Data Reports
from 2008 to 2020. With a steady growth in
the number of female medical students, 2019
marked the first time the majority of U.S. med-
ical school students (50.5%) were women.
What often is not reported is the growth in
women in all sectors of health care – from the
exam room to the front desk or from the ER
to the patient’s side. In fact, the U.S. Census
Bureau’s American Community Survey re-
veals the number of full-time, year-round
workers in health care occupations has almost
doubled since 2000, increasing from five mil-
lion to nine million workers, or 76% of all
health care workers.
There’s not a single component of the
health care system currently not struggling
with hiring and retaining qualified health care
workers – male or female. The COVID-19
pandemic has brought to light the delicate bal-
ance between resilience and fragility, espe-
cially as it relates to recruiting, retaining,
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