There’s high demand for ‘advanced practice professionals’ in Wisconsin hospitals. The rapid growth in the number of positions being created for physician assistants and advanced practice nurses is triggering a new round of recruitment challenges, according to Judy Warmuth, vice president for workforce development with the Wisconsin Hospital Association.
“They have the highest vacancy rate of all the occupations in this year’s survey, and that’s new,” said Warmuth. She said eleven years ago, when the Hospital Association conducted its very first workforce survey, the number of physician assistants and advanced practice nurses in hospitals was not significant.
The increasing difficulty of recruiting primary care doctors means greater demand for these advanced practice professionals. “The place many patients are most likely to see them would be in urgent care environments or hospital emergency rooms,” Warmuth said, but added that they are filling other roles as well.
The latest report also found that positions that hospitals struggled to fill just four years ago, such as pharmacists and radiology technologists, are now reporting historically low vacancy rates.