Transcript
A (0:01)
Hello, I'm Aaron Lohr and this is the Endocrine News podcast. The endocrine workforce shortage is having a tremendous impact on the lives of endocrinologists and the patients they treat. Many practices would benefit from any support that would give the endocrinologist more capacity to focus where they really need to. Could advanced practice providers like nurse practitioners and physician assistants be able to provide that support if they had a little more training? The Endocrine Society and the American association of Nurse Practitioners think so. Together they've developed a new program called Clinical Endocrinology Certificate for Advanced Practice Providers. What does a certificate represent? How does the program work? Joining us today to answer those questions, we have two guests who helped develop the program. Dr. Sarah McLeod, an endocrinologist and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Rochester, and and Dr. Shannon Eidsik, professor and Associate Dean Doctor of Nursing Practice program at the University of Maryland School of Nursing and also a practicing nurse practitioner at the University of Maryland, Upper Chesapeake Health. Thank you both for being here today.
B (1:13)
Thank you so much for having us. It's really good to be here with you all.
C (1:17)
Thank you, Erin. Great to be here with you, Sarah.
A (1:20)
So let's start by talking a bit about the endocrinologist workforce shortage. How bad is it and how long might someone have to wait to see an endocrinologist? And once they're about, how much time can the patient expect to have with the endo.
B (1:33)
Yeah. Thank you for setting the stage, Erin, for this conversation. I think you did a really nice job opening up, you know, the importance of the workforce shortage. And I think we as endocrinologists can feel the impact of the shortage on the day to day and see the impact of that in our patients lives. But you know, some groups actually try to look into this and define what the shortages actually are. I reviewed a paper from the JCEM from some leaders in endocrinology, names that we know like Dr. Young and Dr. Grigorsky, who's published a lot about endocrine workforce demands. The last paper I reviewed that they published really looked at the endocrine workforce needs from the late 1990s all the way up to 2020. And they define the work shortages in that paper. And you know, they really talk about how over the past couple of decades, office visits and services, especially in the diabetes space, have substantially, substantially increased. You know, wait times have increased just generally, but also compared to other physician types. And with those growing demands in our aging population and, you know, more people needing care for things like diabetes and osteoporosis, those growing demands are unfortunately matched with a shortage of supply. And they defined that. And again, this is a little bit of an older paper by this point point, but they, they estimated that this would be a 12% supply lower than the demand needed. And again, that, that's more of an older statistic at this point. So, you know, there's a lot of factors contributing. I think there's no doubt that there's a supply shortage of US endocrinologists and that's really matched with growing needs of our population. So they talk about strategies to overcome that, like increasing fellowship applications and focusing on mentorship. But also collaborative care with other types of healthcare providers is one potential opportunity to help increase the demand of endocrine or increase the supply of endocrine care to match this growing demand. And you know, I can't speak for all endocrinologists, but my wait time is at least a couple months for a new patient visit. And you know, getting in follow ups can be a challenge as well. And I know my peer endocrinologists that I've talked to are also struggling with this, these long wait times. Shannon, what's your take? What have you noticed that about the short supply of endocrinologists?
