We Need More Medical Professionals

How Many Doctors Work in Hawai‘i?

If you had to guess, how many doctors do you think work in Hawai‘i? How many do we need? We can grab this information from a few different places. First, there’s a news article from KITV that says O‘ahu only has about 87% of the doctors the population needs, while Maui has only 57% of the doctors they need. There’s also a report from the University of Hawai‘i that says we need to add more than 3,000 doctors to the ones the state already has. How did this happen? Why don’t we have enough doctors? What can we do?

Let’s talk about contributing factors.

• We need a lot of different kinds of medical professionals. The term “medical professional” means many different jobs, from surgeons to therapists to nurses to technicians, and more. Our bodies are complicated and that means we need some doctors who can look at our overall health (usually called your primary care physician, or PCP) and others who are experts in a special field to help with more complicated problems. For example, if you have diabetes you might want to see a nutritionist. If you have a lot of stress or anger, you might want to see a psychologist or psychiatrist. If you break a bone that has to be fixed, you might have to see an orthopedic surgeon. With so many different fields, it is easy to incur a shortage of professionals.
• It costs a lot to live in Hawai‘i. Rent, food, utilities, transportation, and many other things cost more in Hawai‘i than they do in other places in the U.S. A big reason why is that we import many of the things we need, and that there is a lot of demand to live in places with easy beach access. Even though working in the medical field can pay a lot of money, it might still be hard to do things like buy a car or a house if prices continue to go up.
• Not everyone lives near a doctor. We have a lot of rural places in Hawai‘i and sometimes, if there is an emergency, a doctor is not available right away. If you called 911 from your house, how long would it take an ambulance to get there? Could you drive or take the bus to the nearest hospital, if you had to? Could you walk? These are things to think about when we consider who does and does not have access to medical care. Someone who lives 10 minutes away from a hospital might have better outcomes in an emergency than someone who lives 50 minutes away from a hospital. A person might be more likely to go to annual check-ups if their doctor is nearby, compared to someone who might have to drive or even fly a long distance to see their doctor.
• Retiring doctors don’t have replacements. Some doctors own their practice, meaning they are their own boss. If they are the only doctor on staff, who will take over when they retire? Sometimes doctors simply close their business when they are ready to retire, which means a replacement doctor does not take over to keep seeing those patients.
• Doctors get sick and take vacations, too. It can be hard to get a doctor’s appointment at the last minute–sometimes they are booked up months in advance! A lot of things contribute to this, but we should look at what happens when we already don’t have enough doctors, and then add in that doctors need time off for when they get sick, go on vacation, or need a day off to avoid burnout. Without more doctors, their appointments might stack up and make the waiting time even longer.

Video Break!

The best way to “fix” our doctor/medical professional shortage is for people to receive education and training in those fields so that they can go on to get jobs in the areas we need the most. If you feel like becoming a doctor, nurse, or some type of other medical professional is daunting, that’s understandable. The UH system has a lot of options to help students obtain certifications or their founding courses in many fields, and there is plenty of financial assistance available.

Talk to your career counselor about your options and use the information below to find out how you can get started in some of these careers right away!