Hospitals Race to Find Solution to Mysterious Staffing Problem
The cause of this dire shortage has experts stumped
Somewhere in the US — As the covid-19 pandemic rampages through the US, a new cunning foe has appeared in the war against the killer disease: staffing shortages.
No one is exactly sure why hospitals aren’t able to retain their staff or hire new staff. Experts studying the phenomenon have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to crack the code, and now believe they may need at least double or even triple that amount of funding before they might get closer to answering the question. Meanwhile, political leaders and healthcare advocates say research requires time we simply “do not have”.
“We need answers now!” said California Governor Gavin Newsome to a crowd of swooning reporters. “Since I took over the number of healthcare workers has plummeted and I demand to know who is behind this!”
“It’s pretty obvious”
Some experts believe the shortages are due to changes in the weather caused by anthropogenic climate change and fossil fuel corporations putting greed before health. Such as Dan Haines, professor of climatology at UC Berkeley:
“Whenever the planet undergoes massive shifts in it’s polar latitudes in regards to weather events and broader patterning phenomenon, we see accompanied recalibrations and meta-trends across vast fields of information. We can look at this data and it’s pretty obvious we need to find more sustainable and equitable hierarchies.” Dan said in between bites of a soy-infused bug paste wrap.
Other experts believe the cause of these disparities between employed and unemployed healthcare workers lies at the feet of America’s oldest foe: systemic racism and white supremacy. “White people heard that covid was disproportionately killing minorities so they all quit their jobs so minorities and immigrants would suffer harm and violence. They’d really rather starve than treat brown people as equals. We need to decolonize medicine and eliminate white violence and white privilege in our hospitals.” said Lateesha Jones during a lecture to her graduate students.
“We have petitioned congress”
The hospital administrators themselves are equally baffled: “Ever since we fired a huge chunk of our workforce for not being up-to-date on their covid shots we’ve had less workers. We know we have less workers but there doesn’t appear to be any obvious reason why. We have petitioned congress to approve additional federal funding so we can study this problem further and hopefully have some idea what’s going on in the next few years.” said Janet Birchman, the hiring chief of a local hospital.
Until then, it seems America and other parts of the world must deal with this mysterious and enigmatic problem.