October 13, 2022
The Minnesota Department of Health's Office of Rural Health and Primary Care (ORHPC) has created a new interactive dashboard—COVID–19 and the health care workforce—that highlights the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Minnesota’s health care workforce.
Providers representing the fields of medicine, nursing, respiratory therapy and mental health responded to a COVID-19 survey last year. The dashboard summarizes the pandemic’s effects on telemedicine use, burnout, workplace training and practice skills of providers.
Highlights include:
Telemedicine use rose, especially among mental health practitioners who found alternative ways to continue providing healthcare.
Due to the toll of the pandemic on front-line providers, many indicated that they were planning to leave the healthcare workforce. Respiratory therapists, physician assistants, and registered nurses were more likely to cite burnout as their main reason for leaving within five years, compared to similar data collected before the pandemic.
Most providers reported no changes in the way residents or students were trained at their workplaces during the pandemic, except among physician assistants who frequently reported their training was temporarily halted, possibly setting back careers for many new practitioners.
Despite the many challenges that providers faced delivering care, most reported learning and employing new skills as a positive outcome of the pandemic.
The ORHPC Health Workforce Analysis program asked healthcare providers for their feedback on how they were impacted by COVID–19 from February 2, 2021, to June 17, 2021.
The program collects and analyzes Minnesota–specific data on nearly 20 different licensed healthcare professions and develops workforce reports and presentations.
For more information, contact health.workforce@state.mn.us.
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