- AdventHealth

Choose the health content that’s right for you, and get it delivered right in your inbox.
On Sept. 20, Neil Finkler, MD, chief clinical officer of the AdventHealth Central Florida Division, addressed Florida’s House Health and Human Services Committee and explained some of the challenges facing health care professionals.
At the forefront of the discussion is the widespread shortage of nurses. Staffing nurses was a challenge before the pandemic, Finkler explained, but COVID-19 has intensified the urgency to address the shortage. During the pandemic, many nurses chose to either become traveling nurses and relocate to COVID-19 hot spots around the country for compensation of $10,000 a week or leave the nursing field altogether.
“This is really one of the great existential threats to our ability to continue to deliver healthcare,” Finkler said. “This is not sustainable. It limits consistency. It limits our mentoring capability. It limits team building, and it limits a lot of the things that we have done to improve the quality of care that we provide."
Finkler, along with colleagues from other health care organizations, asked lawmakers to help with the various obstacles hospitals face and expressed the need for more students, professors and educational opportunities to ensure the industry has an adequate workforce in the future.
Learn more about Finkler’s testimony here.
More related articles on Finkler testifying to the Florida Legislature on the staffing crisis:
Recent News
While the field of orthopedics has made incredible strides in recent decades, challenges and opportunities remain.
In our latest Clinician’s View, Rothman Orthopaedics Florida at AdventHealth Director...
The AdventHealth Neuroscience Institute is the first in Florida and one of the first in the country to begin recruiting patients with primary progressive or non-active secondary progressive multiple...
Accurately determining food intake remains a challenge in nutrition research. A new study published in Nature Metabolism and co-authored by Dr. Corbin introduces a metagenomics-powered approach to...
Discover what’s being accomplished in Central Florida to bridge the health gap with Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings and AdventHealth’s Dr. Alric Simmonds.
Breakthrough device offers new hope for stroke survivors struggling with rehabilitation following ischemic stroke
Jennifer Seminerio, MD, recently became one of the first in Florida to use intestinal ultrasound (IUS) to help assess and manage treatment of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). A non...
Every year, approximately 1.5 million surgical heart procedures require access to the left side of the heart for catheter-based treatments like atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation, left atrial appendage...
The Convergent Hybrid Ablation procedure has been gaining acceptance as an effective treatment option for long-standing persistent atrial fibrillation (AFib) since the CONVERGE trial data published in...
Recently, AdventHealth for Children pediatric orthopedic surgeon Sean Keyes, DO, Katelyn Smith, PA-C, and their team performed their 100th bridge-enhanced anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) repair (BEAR...
To help bridge the gap and save more lives, AdventHealth and OurLegacy, east Central Florida’s federally designated organ procurement organization (OPO), recently opened an innovative, centralized and...
Through his leadership in The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), AdventHealth Healthcare Epidemiologist and Infection Control Officer Vincent Hsu, MD, MPH, FSHEA, FACP, has been...
Physician leaders from AdventHealth’s emergency department, infectious disease, inpatient, pediatrics and pharmacy teams all collaborated to develop a respiratory virus testing algorithm to assist...