VISTA Voice

The Match is something every doctor remembers. Years of school, intense study and preparation lead to this moment when medical students learn where they will spend their next three to eight years or more in specialty training.

Match Week 2020 is here, with Match Day on Friday, March 20th. To all medical students heading into Match Week — congratulations! No matter what happens, you’ve worked hard to get here and should be proud of your accomplishments.

In the evolving world of healthcare, advanced practice clinicians are poised to play an important role in helping fill physician shortages at hospitals and other medical centers in underserved areas.

In medicine, institutional goals use three primary measures – clinical, financial, and operational – and there is a tradeoff if you have limited resources and staffing. For instance, increasing patient satisfaction (clinical) may decrease throughput (operational) as you devote more time and energy to each individual person. Increasing your facility’s capacity (operational) can be costly and undermine the hospital’s finances (financial).

By the year 2025, industry analysts predict the healthcare industry will undergo major shifts, including a noticeable gap in the number of available health care providers. A combination of more insured patients, an aging population, a rise in the number of veterans with medical issues, and a shortage of doctors pose challenges to an already stressed system. Advanced practice providers like nurse practitioners and physician assistants are vital to helping close the gap between patient demand and provider supply.

However, attracting skilled advanced practice providers is only half the battle. Retaining these skilled health care providers and integrating their roles into a hospital's daily functions is just as critical. These providers' roles also have to be integrated in a way that satisfies them and the doctors they work with. The following are crucial components to a successful integration between advanced practice providers and physicians in a hospital environment.

As time goes on, the shortage of physicians is increasing. Demand is exceeding supply due to an aging population as well as the long training times involved in getting new medical students their degrees. The raw capacity of medical schools is also limited.

Because of this, the medical industry has had to adapt. Procedures that were once done by doctors are being performed by Advanced Practice Providers (APP) like nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and certified nurse registered anesthetists. Currently, there are about 234,000 advanced practice registered nurses in the United States, and the number is expected to grow.

A key challenge associated with the physician shortage throughout the United States is finding qualified professionals to handle primary care. Physicians have limitations on the number of patients they are able to see in a set time frame and may focus on specialized areas of medicine. Nurse practitioners in primary care are expected to grow by roughly 93 percent by 2025, a trend that may help relieve the pressure caused by the shortage.

With the strenuous workload and stress-riddled environment inherent in the medical industry, it can be challenging to maintain a patient-first approach. When organizations focus on delivering a top-notch patient experience, patients are more satisfied with the care they receive and are more willing to seek it when needed, ultimately leading to better individual and population health. Additionally, organizations are more profitable when they achieve a higher rate of patient satisfaction.

Physicians have many tasks and responsibilities vying for their time, including mountains of paperwork, increased patient volume, electronic medical record demands, outdated technologies, and countless interruptions. All of these issues add stress and affect the ability of physicians to focus on their primary purpose for getting into medicine in the first place: caring for their patients. If you are dealing with exceptional levels of stress as a physician, the tips below will help you to increase your productivity and boost your job satisfaction. Better productivity can also improve patient care.

Maintenance of Certification, or MOC, is a process by which physicians maintain certification through the American Board of Medical Specialties or the American Osteopathic Association. The process of implementing MOC began in 2000, when the ABMS determined that such a system would help to keep physicians up-to-date on the rapidly-evolving information and issues within their respective specialties. This system has been around for some years, but many physicians are still unclear on MOC's requirements and benefits.

Dear Physician Assistant (PA),

In honor of National PA Week, VISTA wishes to extend a sincere and tremendous thank-you to physician assistants everywhere. From October 6-12th, we’re celebrating National PA Week, which recognizes the PA profession and its contributions to the nation’s health. During PA Week, we hope you’ll have the chance to talk to a PA about what it is they do, and why they're proud to do it.

We recognize even if you haven’t been treated by a PA before, there’s a good chance you will in the near future. There are more than 123,000 PAs working across the country—and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the profession is expected to grow 37 percent between 2016 and 2036.