3 ms·

I never get how a healthcare system could "collapse". What could happen, and in fact what is happening in societies with stretched health care systems, is that

I never get how a healthcare system could "collapse". What could happen, and in fact what is happening in societies with stretched health care systems, is that people get triaged and wait, possibly until they die off.

nhinck3 3y ago
Because it kicks on to non-urgent, elective surgeries, preventative care etc which in turn reverberates into increased utilisation in the future. It can take a long time for the system to recover.
JellyBeanThief 3y ago
Healthcare staff aren't superhuman and can burn out same as anyone else. The workload of those who do shifts onto those who haven't, who burn out all the sooner for it. At some point, a critical mass of people are going to say "What am I really doing here?" and leave and not come back.
kstenerud 3y ago
It's called "congestive collapse" or "throughput collapse" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_congestion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_congestion It's caused when a surge in traffic causes a self-reinforcing blockage that doesn't solve itself even after reducing incoming traffic below the pre-surge level. Network traffic planning is always a conflict between efficiency and edge case tolerance.
n8henrie 3y ago
Working as a medical professional in an over-stressed system is demoralizing, perhaps in some ways similar to how being stuck in standstill traffic is stressful (even though perhaps there's no reason it must be a priori). I can think of 3 colleagues (out of my team with capacity for ~9) that have left emergency medicine altogether, and 5 more that are trying to cut back to part time, in large part because the day-to-day has changed so dramatically over the last 3 years. Part of the collapse is when the boots on the ground decide "nope, this isn't what I signed up for" and find something else to do.

3 ms·

I never get how a healthcare system could "collapse". What could happen, and in fact what is happening in societies with stretched health care systems, is that

by TeeMassive 3y ago

nhinck3 3y ago
Because it kicks on to non-urgent, elective surgeries, preventative care etc which in turn reverberates into increased utilisation in the future. It can take a long time for the system to recover.
JellyBeanThief 3y ago
Healthcare staff aren't superhuman and can burn out same as anyone else. The workload of those who do shifts onto those who haven't, who burn out all the sooner for it. At some point, a critical mass of people are going to say "What am I really doing here?" and leave and not come back.
kstenerud 3y ago
It's called "congestive collapse" or "throughput collapse" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_congestion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_congestion It's caused when a surge in traffic causes a self-reinforcing blockage that doesn't solve itself even after reducing incoming traffic below the pre-surge level. Network traffic planning is always a conflict between efficiency and edge case tolerance.
n8henrie 3y ago
Working as a medical professional in an over-stressed system is demoralizing, perhaps in some ways similar to how being stuck in standstill traffic is stressful (even though perhaps there's no reason it must be a priori). I can think of 3 colleagues (out of my team with capacity for ~9) that have left emergency medicine altogether, and 5 more that are trying to cut back to part time, in large part because the day-to-day has changed so dramatically over the last 3 years. Part of the collapse is when the boots on the ground decide "nope, this isn't what I signed up for" and find something else to do.