Opinion: While record-setting wait times, staffing shortages and burnout are daunting, these pressures are an opportunity to push forward needed policy change.
A mentor recently said to me, “I’m sorry you’re graduating into the toughest working conditions I’ve seen.” I’ll soon be an independent family and emergency physician, and she’s right — much ado has been made recently of record-setting wait times, staffing shortages and growing levels of burnout in emergency departments across the country.
While daunting, these system pressures could represent an opportunity to drive forward much-needed policy change in both our primary and acute care settings. Emergency department wait times are not a stand-alone metric. “Fixing” them therefore means addressing the causes at their core, with a necessary first step being investing in a strong primary care system, such that every individual has timely access to the prevention and treatment of disease.
An increasingly common refrain from the patients we see in the emergency department is that they were unable to access their primary care provider, despite
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