Staffing: Act Now to Stave Off Staffing Shortages

The extraordinary measures nurses took to combat COVID-19 has taken their toll on the profession and continue to worsen the ongoing crisis for the nursing workforce. A longitudinal study by the American Organization for Nursing Leadership (AONL) identified nurses’ emotional health and well-being as the most acute problem facing health care today. The pandemic has accelerated the long-existing problem of the nursing shortage by 20 years, according to a report in Employee Benefit News.

America’s more than 3.1 million registered nurses make up the largest segment of the healthcare workforce in the U.S. and nursing is one of the fastest-growing occupations in the country. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the supply of RNs will grow by 16% between 2014 and 2024, more than double of all occupations and only one percentage point less than health diagnosing and treating practitioners combined. Despite the projection in growth, demand is outpacing supply. It’s been estimated that 1.2 million nursing vacancies were to emerge between 2014 and 2022, and by 2025 the shortfall is expected to be more than twice as large as any nursing shortage experienced since the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s. During this pandemic, the total number of RNs dropped significantly, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Additionally, a 2015 study published in the journal Medical Care predicted more than one million nurses are expected to retire between now and 2030, taking with them an invaluable amount of accumulated knowledge and experience.

The combination of these factors will have a significant impact on the delivery of quality care in the coming years. There’s little doubt national nursing leaders and healthcare systems must develop solutions to a problem that will only get worse if left unattended.

To shed light on this issue and explore how the healthcare industry can confront widespread staffing shortages, we must first examine employee engagement and the role it plays in the daily work lives of employees and in the delivery of patient care. Empowered employees are more engaged, resulting in better retention and a higher quality of customer service. They’re also more motivated, which leads to better performance and higher productivity. An empowered workforce is aligned with your facility’s objectives, allowing you to be smarter and more agile in an ever-shifting clinical and business landscape. Creating an environment with an empowered staff that promotes safety, accountability and collaboration can mitigate failures while optimizing innovations that improve the delivery of safe and effective patient care.

According to a report in Entrepreneur, the single most effective employee engagement strategy any leader can deploy is walking the walk. The report says employees in companies where leaders demonstrate the characteristics and behaviors everyone else is asked to display are 55% more engaged and 53% more likely to remain at the company.

You might get lost in the daily responsibilities of your job and sometimes forget to check in on your staff. Set aside time during each day to observe your team in action. Look for overstressed staff members and jump in to alleviate some of their immediate burdens. Can you help turn over ORs between cases, restock the blanket warmer or help discharge patients? Seemingly small gestures can make a significant difference to overwhelmed nurses. It also shows you’re engaged in leading them, care about their well-being and are willing to help them manage their workday responsibilities.

Nurses and nursing leaders have faced constant pressures to adapt to an ever-changing reality to keep their facilities running during unprecedented times throughout the first wave of the pandemic, the shutdown of elective surgeries and backlogs of cases when cases were allowed to resume. Nurses have been operating on high alert for prolonged periods of time. The pressures have been constant and unrelenting. Vacations are getting canceled and it’s difficult for many frontline staffers to take even a day off. They have not been able to pause to regroup and rejuvenate. As a result, they’re physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted.

Nurses have been operating on high alert for prolonged periods of time.

They need your support and help in managing the daily stressors of their jobs. The efforts you make will improve their engagement and commitment to your facility. To that end, consider bringing in mental health therapists on a regular basis or partner with a telehealth counseling group to give staff free access to professional help when they’re feeling overwhelmed. Handing out laminated cards containing basic mindfulness exercises — feeling the floor beneath your feet, noticing specific items around you, focusing on your breath, simple stretching exercises — that staff attach to their ID badges gives them a quick reference they can use to recenter themselves during stressful times.