The Aging Physician Workforce: A Demographic Dilemma

In the article “The Aging Physician Workforce: A Demographic Dilemma” by Merritt Hawkins, it introduces the current status of aging issues in American society, the relationship between the aging and healthcare industry, and the aging physician workforce. The percentage of older adults (older than sixty-five years old) in the U.S. keeps growing and as more people become to older adults, there are more needs for the public to visit healthcare more often because of their chronic conditions. At the same time, the percentage of older adult physicians is also growing. Hence, the increasing percentages of older adults in both public and physician could cause a shortage of physicians in the near future. As we can see, aging issues begin to influence the physician workforce and since the physicians are directly related to the condition of public health, their aging issues worth to win public attentions. I
Celeste Pang and Sarah A. Williams’ article, “‘Why Give Up Something That Works So Well?’: Retirement Expectations Among Academic Physicians”, they write about the complexity of the retirement for older physicians (academic physicians), and particularly discuss about what are the concerns for older physicians (academic physicians) to stop them from retiring. As they mentioned, hardly separated relationship between work and life and the fear of feeling worthless. According to their analysis, the ways to solve the issue for leaders within healthcare institutions are to “further understand the needs of their potential retirees and develop policies and support systems that enable a dignified, engaged, and smooth transition out of the formal workforce.” I will use arguments in this essay to show the concerns physicians have about the retirement and to show why it is hard for physicians to retire. After taking a close look at older physicians’ situations, I will conclude the effective ways to help older physicians transit better to retiring