Are You Training Your Staff for Their Next Job? Retaining Your Clinical Workforce

It would come as no surprise to anyone working in the substance use disorder (SUD) prevention/treatment and recovery industry that there is an obvious staffing problem that so many providers struggle with. Agencies have faced this crisis since before the pandemic, and Christine Vestal of the Pew Charitable Trust (2015), identified the number of SUD counselors available to meet the need at that time as “inadequate.” As the post-pandemic era approaches, the industry is in even worse shape, with organizations often “staffed so thinly or shuttering” (Taylor, 2021). Competition for qualified professionals, according to one industry insider, is increasingly keen as they try to keep up with the challenges presented (Taylor, 2021).