Can I put a date on it? Of course not. I just expect it to continue to get worse until it becomes totally untenable, because everything I see in delivery in my little neck of the woods says it will continue in this direction until either major changes are made or all the tests are turned into waived, "point of care" so they don't need any trained people, or disaster happens. I don't know what the exact tripping point will be, any more than 30 years ago client scientists could have foreseen the Siberian methane fields, not to mention the undersea methane fountains.
"how can you possibly predict what happens after it occurs?"
I don't recall having made any predictions about what happens after the "explosion" and have no idea exactly how it will play out. I only know from my direct experience that it is really, really bad and getting worse.
I know it costs roughly twice as much to get the training as it did 10 years ago, but the pay scale is declining and the work load is increasing and the work environment is incredibly toxic. It is well past the point where it makes more financial sense and is less stressful to take a $15/hour call center job with paid training to spend your time being screamed at by a wealthy person about their 401Ks and taxes they didn't pay. The schools can only sucker so many students into the program -- and have only so many of the older, retraining people lose their homes and retirement savings as a result of the lack of decent paying jobs --before word gets around that there is very little work out there and it doesn't pay the bills.
I trained my replacements at the call center job -- which included newly laid off nurses from the nearby hospital that was on the brink of bankruptcy due to State nonpayment of about $3M in Medicare bills. The state is also a couple years and millions in arrears to the hospital where I work. I expect the same is true around the state. So how do the hospitals keep running? They squeeze more out of the bottom layer.
I just finished school and started this job. Already, I am planning to leave the field. Thank freakin' gawd for the income based repayment program for student loans or I would have already defaulted because I simply can't pay the loans on the actual pay, which is 25% less than I was quoted by hospital HR 3 years ago. Had I known about the program 2 years ago I would have dropped out of the program and continued at the call center, based on what I suspected both from school experience and from the nurses I was training in the financial call center.
I hated the school and considered moving to another state. Between when I first started researching that move and when I actually started applying to schools where I could get the most credits transferred, easily half if not more of the schools offering the program had *closed.* They already were seeing a huge decline in student; what remained were consolidated in State universities.
As long as the delivery people at the bottom are treated like disposable gauze, to be ripped off by the schools and soaked by the employers, there will be a chronic and increasing shortage.
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