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A comment on Top navy admiral wants rust-free ships. Parent comment

Re:Top navy admiral wants rust-free ships by chromatin on Saturday April 30, 2022 @09:30AM (#31215937)
At least in healthcare, I doubt this is a major causative factor (presuming when you say roles you mean physicians and nurses) -- the physicians are extremely supportive of the nurses, and their demands for more pay and better conditions in all the healthcare settings I've worked.

The real problem is the unaccountable bureaucratic management, which are neither physicians nor nurses, and the numbers of which continue to expand (sucking up financial resources) while physicians and nurses workload increases and pay continues to decrease in real terms.

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Re:Top navy admiral wants rust-free ships by geogra4 on Saturday April 30, 2022 @09:44AM (#31216029)
I tend to agree with the parent post about the extreme rigidness though causing issues. My wife is an Occupational Therapist and in some states she can supervise showering and some states only nurses can. Some states she can initiate cases and some states she can't.

There are too many micro-specialties and not enough crossover. Imagine if once you were a frontend dev you would have to go back to school for 2 years full time to be legally allowed to do ui design of a button even though there is a lot of crossover and knowledge sharing between roles.

This definitely causes shortages and issues when the demand naturally rises and falls for various Healthcare disciplines.

I'm not saying formal education isn't important but there could be a much more fluid crossover between various allied health disciplines than their is currently.

Maybe more transition programs or seeing individual billing codes for Medicare attached to education modules

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Re:Top navy admiral wants rust-free ships by maxerickson on Saturday April 30, 2022 @09:54AM (#31216098)
It's driven (or at least exacerbated) by the physician shortage.

If it weren't profitable to have large numbers of staff per doctor, there wouldn't be large numbers of staff per doctor.

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Re:Top navy admiral wants rust-free ships by nradov on Saturday April 30, 2022 @10:35AM (#31216382)
Even if we had more licensed physicians we would still have a large number of staff per doctor. A radiologist might be able to administer contrast to a patient, check their vital signs, transport them to the MRI machine, and run the scan but that's not a good use of a radiologist's time. Better to have nurses, orderlies, and technicians do all that so the radiologist can focus on reading the images.
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Re:Top navy admiral wants rust-free ships by maxerickson on Saturday April 30, 2022 @10:42AM (#31216427)
Yes, it's obvious that some level of support staff are a good idea.

Now make an argument that the current arrangement is more optimal than the one we might end up with if there were more doctors.

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Re:Top navy admiral wants rust-free ships by nradov on Saturday April 30, 2022 @11:54AM (#31216945)
That part is obvious. Regardless of the number of physicians, they will always be the most expensive resources. Thus any procedure which can safely and legally be performed by less expensive resources, should be.
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Re:Top navy admiral wants rust-free ships by maxerickson on Saturday April 30, 2022 @02:06PM (#31217893)
That is scarcity thinking.
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Re:Top navy admiral wants rust-free ships by nradov on Saturday April 30, 2022 @02:13PM (#31217941)
Yes resources will always be scarce and we need to manage accordingly. That is reality.
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