Health Workforce

Despite increased attention and efforts focused on diversifying the U.S. health care workforce, little progress has been made over the past 2 decades. Blind hiring practices, successfully used in other industries, could be adapted to increase diversity in the health care workforce pipeline. Such practices would be expected to address two persistent barriers to health care workforce diversity: implicit bias and systemic bias.

Data from the 2021 National Residents Matching Program revealed that for the upcoming academic year, interest in rheumatology among first-year medical school trainees continues to grow.

Women in rheumatology on average see fewer patients, and have fewer patient visits, per year than their male colleagues, resulting in lower earnings, according to data published in The Journal of Rheumatology.

Linda F. Fried, MD, MPH, FASN, co-chair of ASN Kidney Week Education Committee, discussed the ASN Kidney Week presidential address on tackling racial inequities and exciting medical professionals during “an exciting time in nephrology.”

It is well-documented that cancer care in the U.S. is facing an impending workforce crisis.

Former CDC director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, recently described a hierarchy of controls — elimination, substitution, engineering, administration and personal protective equipment — that may help prevent COVID-19 among health care workers.

More than 100 patient advocates, including physicians and health professionals from the American College of Rheumatology, took to Capitol Hill this week for the organization’s annual Advocates for Arthritis event, to call on legislators to support a trio of bills that would reform step therapy and increase the number of pediatric rheumatologists in underserved areas.