According to the World Health Statistics Report, there are 3.1 million nurses in the United States and in 2020 there will be a need for 1 million more nurses. According to The American Nurses Association (ANA), there will be more registered nurse jobs available through 2022 than any other profession in the United States. The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics predicts a projected need of 11 million more nurses to end this continual nursing shortage that has been at the forefront of healthcare conversations for years. The gap of nursing needs continues to widen and is deeply discussed in an article published on NCBI entitled Nursing Shortage.
In 2001 a nursing shortage was caused by people not choosing to be nurses which led to a lack of supply for positions nationwide. The current nursing shortage is caused by the aging population, the aging workforce, on top of a limited supply of nurses graduating from programs across the country. As a new generation of nurses enter into the workforce, healthcare administrators are going to have to do more than they have ever had to do in the past to keep nurses within their healthcare systems and even more to keep them at the bedside.
Nurses have always asked for practices that protect the rights of patients and healthcare workers including mandated staffing ratios, pay equity, and an ability to obtain a new license in other states making it easy to move, work across state lines, or work as a travel nurse to cover hospital shortages. As new issues have arisen in the past 20 years, nurses demands have expanded to encompass the growth and change that nurses need in order to practice safely. Some of these changes include the expansion of the role and authority of nurse practitioners, disconnecting reimbursements that are linked to patient satisfaction scores, and expanding telemedicine which has shown to be effective, although only implemented widely due to the pandemic.
During this global pandemic we have now seen more requests for hazard pay for nurses who work through natural disasters, incidents of mass casualties, and other times of high stress that can harm a nurses physical and mental health. We have been talking about burn out in healthcare for years, but we should also be talking about grief and treating grief within the hospital and on the unit to ensure nurses are getting the mental care that they need.
A hospital loses money when there is a high nurse turnover, but additionally patients feel the impact of nurse turnover by the increased use of physical restraints, findings of more pressure ulcers, and an increase in patient falls. The solution to nurse turnover has not been found, because the problem seems to be a moving target with no real definition, no definitive data, and no direct correlation to any one key factor in a healthcare system or organization.
But if you ask nurses what they want when looking for an ideal position besides the solutions that are always discussed, many will tell you that they want to be involved in the committees that make decisions that impact them for 36 or more hours a week. This can be an easy fix and an easy decision to include the voices of nurses to ensure their perspective is considered and whatever new policy is suggested is implementable. Some of the more loftier requests include nurses having pensions, lifetime health insurance, and health insurance that includes extensive mental health coverage due to the nature of the job. These are the requests of the people who lift, push, bathe, feed, medicate, treat, and hold your family members hand when you are present and when you are not. This pandemic has shed light on how much nurses go above and beyond the listed job description and how many lead with love and compassion which is vital to a patients healing.
Do you want to continue to let the disease of losing quality nurses during a national shortage fester or do you want to make the changes necessary to make the nursing profession one that people commit to for a lifetime? It is time for a cure and nurses know how best to treat this disease called nurse turnover.
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