These labor market dynamics make it more difficult than ever to fill the empty slots. Hospitals are employing several strategies to fill the gaps in nursing for the short term. Tapping staff doing nonclinical work: Employees whose jobs do not involve clinical care are stepping in to serve patients or take on other tasks to ease the burden on clinical staff. At UMass Memorial Health, administrators with clinical licenses have been pulled in to provide patient services in line with their skills, Precourt explains.
Parkland and UAB established sign-up systems for staff to see what tasks are available, enter their skills to match certain needs, and offer time slots to work. The duties range from delivering meals and transporting patients through the hospital to providing bedside care and guiding patients through discharge.
Among those signing up was Powers, the UAB teacher who brought students along for the assignment. Tapping educators and students: Powers, a nurse practitioner, accepted a request from the nursing school for faculty to help fill nursing gaps at the hospital. She and her colleagues initiated a system whereby one nursing school faculty member leads a team of four students who volunteer in shifts.
One of their main tasks has been helping nurses to turn ventilated patients into the prone position — a strategy that has proven lifesaving in some cases. But the process is labor-intensive, because the patients are medically fragile and connected to numerous devices. It typically takes nine people 45 minutes to safely turn one ICU patient, Powers explains. In hot spots around the country, medical, nursing, and pharmacy students are in hospitals doing everything from helping to transport patients and ferrying lab specimens to delivering meal trays and emptying trash cans.
Recruiting: Many hospitals are offering signing bonuses for nurses to work in specific high-need areas. Woodward sees the irony in hospitals filling vacancies by increasing their recruitment of nurses from other hospitals and using traveling nurse companies.
Retaining: Some hospitals are raising salaries and offering bonuses to keep their existing nursing staff. Parkland offers some of its nurses temporary contracts that pay close to what they might receive through a traveling nurse company; when the contracts expire, they can resume their regular employment.
Compounding the problem is the fact that nursing schools across the country are struggling to expand capacity to meet the rising demand for care given the national move toward healthcare reform. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing AACN is working with schools, policy makers, nursing organizations, and the media to bring attention to this healthcare concern.
AACN is leveraging its resources to shape legislation, identify strategies, and form collaborations to address the shortage. To keep stakeholders abreast of the issues, this fact sheet has been developed along with a c ompanion web resource.
Though AACN reported a 5. A shortage of nursing school faculty is restricting nursing program enrollments. Changing demographics signal a need for more nurses to care for our aging population. Insufficient staffing is raising the stress level of nurses, impacting job satisfaction, and driving many nurses to leave the profession. Many scientific studies point to the connection between adequate levels of registered nurse staffing and safe patient care.
Last Update: September Robert Rosseter rrosseter aacnnursing. Nursing Shortage. Current and Projected Shortage Indicators. The RN workforce is expected to grow from 3 million in to 3. The Bureau also projects , openings for RNs each year through when nurse retirements and workforce exits are factored into the number of nurses needed in the U. In this state-by-state analysis, the authors forecast the RN shortage to be most intense in the South and the West.
The current nursing workforce falls far short of these recommendations with only In July , the Tri-Council for Nursing released a joint statement on Recent Registered Nurse Supply and Demand Projections, which cautioned stakeholders about declaring an end to the nursing shortage. The downturn in the economy has lead to an easing of the shortage in many parts of the country, a recent development most analysts believe to be temporary.
In the joint statement, the Tri-Council raises serious concerns about slowing the production of RNs given the projected demand for nursing services, particularly in light of healthcare reform. The number of registered nurses under the age of 30 is decreasing.
The RN population under 30 dropped from Between and , the average age of registered nurses increased from The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that jobs for registered nurses will grow 23 percent by That's faster than the average for all other occupations. About half of the RN workforce will reach retirement age in the next 15 years. The average age of new graduates is They are entering the profession at an older age and will have fewer years to work than nurses traditionally have had.
Enrollments in entry-level nursing programs increased in the fall of , ending a six-year period of decline, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. However, the enrollment increase is not enough to meet the projected need for new nurses. It also confirms that Americans overwhelmingly trust, respect and admire nurses and would encourage family and friends to consider a nursing career.
However, a general lack of knowledge of the many opportunities nursing offers is a significant barrier to nursing recruitment efforts. The study shows that: 81 percent of Americans recognize there is a nursing shortage; 65 percent believe it is either a major problem or a crisis. Seniors, aged 55 and older, are particularly sensitive to the shortage's impact on the quality of the health care system.
How is the shortage affecting patients? The report also says: In hospitals across the country, , nursing positions remain unfilled, while 90 percent of long-term care facilities don't have enough nurses to provide even the most basic care.
Some home-health care agencies are being forced to refuse new patients.
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