PP902 - Analysis of the AuD Degree Pipeline into the Workforce, Benchmarked to Other Health-Care Professions

Abstract:
One measure of the health of a profession is the growth of the workforce. Many healthcare professions are growing at 3-4% per year, but the audiology workforce is growing at less than 1% per year (Bray & Amlani, 2019, 2022). Lack of growth of a healthcare profession may be because the input is too few (the sum of the degrees awarded yearly). An alternate hypothesis is the outflow is too high (attrition and retirement). This poster will measure the ‘input-workforce-outflow’ function for audiology, and comparable healthcare professions, to determine if our workforce issue is an input, outflow or input+outflow problem.

Summary: Rationale/

Purpose: The health of the profession of audiology is in questionable status, as documented in the AAA poster series by Bray and Amlani. The two 2021 posters, one of which won the professional poster award, evaluated audiology wages and audiology workforce, in a benchmarking analysis of 19 healthcare professions. The two 2022 posters, one of which won the professional poster award, evaluated audiology wages and degree in a benchmarking analysis of 34 healthcare professions, and evaluated educational debt-to-income ratio in a benchmarking analysis of six healthcare professions. This poster submission continues the analysis of the the profession by quantifying the educational pipeline (AuD degrees awarded annually) as a percentage of the workforce, benchmarked to other healthcare professions, to extend the work of Freeman & Windmill (2013) and Marquart, Hosford-Dunn, & Fishback (2017). 

Methods: The multi-year educational pipeline for ten comparable healthcare professions (audiology, chiropractic, nurse practitioner, occupational therapy, optometry, orthotics & prosthetics, physician assistant, physical therapy, podiatry, and speech-language pathology) will be compared as a percentage of the workforce.  The objective of the poster is a comprehensive dataset and rigorous analysis across the professions, toward a goal of creating a validated workforce model. 

Results &

Conclusions:  A preliminary analysis (Bray & Amlani, November 2022) found that pipeline-to-workforce percentages across several healthcare professions ranged from 3% to 10%. Using this data as input to the workforce, outflow (attrition and retirement) was found to range from less than 10% to greater than 40% across the professions. This preliminary work established that the methodology has merit for workforce modeling. The poster will extend the preliminary modeling towards the goal of determining, compared to comparable healthcare professions, whether the lack of growth in our profession is an input problem (too few AuD graduates), an outflow problem (too much attrition and retirement), or a combination of the two factors. 

Importance of Work:  In a nation of increasing population, combined with a graying of the population, the audiology workforce is not keeping pace with increasing demand (BLS data). Into this workplace void, the non-degreed profession of the hearing aid specialist has more than doubled their workforce over the last decade (BLS data). If the profession of audiology cannot make changes to grow their workforce at an increased rate, further encroachment into the audiology scope of practice will occur in order to meet population demands. But, in order to solve the problem of how to grow our workforce, we must first have a working workforce model to quantify if the problem is input (educational pipeline) or outflow (attrition and retirement), or both. The intent of this poster is to provide benchmarking data, against comparable healthcare professions, to understand where our future efforts need to be applied to solve problems and increase the rate of growth in the audiology workforce.