Nursing workforce dynamics impact more than nurses.
In addition to burnout and fatigue, shortages can result in reduced services for patients, increased expenses related to overtime and traveling nurses and even difficulty placing clinical students, said Juliann Sebastian, PhD, dean of the UNMC College of Nursing.
Dr. Sebastian shared reflections on the nursing workforce during Monday’s Breakthrough Thinking Conference series. According to the Nebraska Department of Labor, she said, there were 2,486 jobs openings in November for registered nurses and an estimated .06 candidates available for each job.
Still, Dr. Sebastian, who will retire in 2023, said the UNMC College of Nursing has worked hard to expand enrollment and build clinical partnerships that enhance the nursing workforce and benefit all Nebraskans.
Designed to challenge and inspire out-of-the-box thinking, the first of this season’s Breakthrough Thinking series focused on creating a stronger post-pandemic nursing workforce.
See the recording of the Breakthrough Thinking session.
Said Peter Buerhaus, PhD, a nurse and health care economist known for his studies and publications focused on the nursing and physician workforces in the United States: “There seems to be pessimism about the future, but history shows that, guided by leadership and data, positive change can occur.”
After the 1998-2002 national nursing shortage, he said, the workforce grew stronger because of strategies by the Joint Commission and American Hospital Association, Johnson and Johnson’s Campaign for Nursing’s Future and the Nurse Reinvestment Act passed by Congress in 2002.
“We’re in a position (again) to make this a positive decade,” said Dr. Buerhaus, professor of nursing and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Workforce Studies at Montana State University’s College of Nursing.
His optimism stems, in part, from strengths within the registered nurse workforce, including:
- An increasingly educated and racially diverse workforce;
- Persistently positive public perceptions of nurses over the past two decades;
- Enduring and astonishing private sector support for nurses; and
- The rapid growth in numbers and impacts of the Advanced Practice Registered Nurse workforce, especially nurse practitioners, which he predicts will grow through 2030.
During that same time, Dr. Buerhaus expects some 500,000 registered nurses to retire, sparking uncertainty about the future hospital workforce.
“We need to promote what is positive to grow this workforce,” Dr. Buerhaus said, noting that recent messaging about nurses “has been dreadful” and “worrisome.”
He recommends hospitals and nurses place greater emphasis on what nurses did right during the pandemic, how they can be supported and the innovative work they did. He also proposes resetting the economic relationship between hospitals and nurses, including embracing value-based payment and rejecting the imposition of mandatory minimum staffing ratios.
During this webinar, Dr. Buerhaus mentioned references included in his slidedeck, but I don’t believe these were shown during the webinar. Is it possible to get a copy of the slide presentation if UNMC has it?