Incredible Health

Empowering healthcare professionals to find and do their best work.

Iman Abuzeid, MD

STUDY: 80% of nurses plan to stay in field until retirement despite ongoing concerns

It’s no secret that the last few years have been tough for nurses. From the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to this past winter’s fears of a “tri-demic,” nurses have had to deal with stress and burnout, all while tasked with keeping their communities safe and healthy. It’s a big job for a profession that is the backbone of our US healthcare system.

Today, we unveil the findings of Incredible Health’s 2023 State of US Nursing Report, our 4th annual report. We can finally share some good news despite ongoing concerns: Today, 80% of nurses plan to stay in the industry until retirement, up from 55% in 2022. Still, a majority (84%) do not think the nursing industry is improving fast enough when it comes to addressing understaffing, burnout, and pay.

We analyzed our own proprietary hiring data of over 700,000 nurses (300,000 more nurses than last year) and surveyed over 3,000 nurses who utilize the Incredible Health platform nationwide. The findings highlight areas where nurses have seen specific improvements and areas health systems, nursing education leaders, and Incredible Health could provide more support.

Chart showing more nurses plan on staying in the industry until retirement in 2023

The big picture

The industry is moving in the right direction. Since our last report, we have seen key improvements across key areas.

More nurses plan on staying in the industry until retirement. Last year only 55% of nurses reported planning on staying in the industry until retirement. Today, that number has increased to 80%. In addition: 

  • Most nurses (54%) surveyed would recommend nursing as a career.
  • 10% fewer nurses plan to leave their roles within the year, indicating an overall increase in job satisfaction.

This data highlights a crucial trend toward more nurses remaining in the field at a time when the nursing shortage is at a critical level in the United States.

Mental health has stabilized. While our previous reports have flagged worsening mental health concerns of US nurses, new data suggests nurse mental health is no longer in decline. There was a one-point increase in nurses reporting good mental health – from 25% in 2022 to 26% in 2023. 

Today, one in four nurses use Incredible Health and have access to our Nurse Wellness Toolkit, which includes stress reduction content and a community built exclusively for nurses to get the support and advice they need.

Money Matters

While compensation is only one factor nurses consider when it comes to job satisfaction, it remains a key consideration when nurses are evaluating their next career steps. 

chart showing nursing signing bonuses are on the rise in 2023

Signing bonuses are on the rise. Nearly half (48%) of offers made on the Incredible Health platform included a sign-on bonus, up 14% over last year, pointing to health systems leveraging bonuses to bridge salary gaps. 

  • The average bonus was $11,767, 8% higher than last year. 
  • Hospitals in South Carolina had the highest average payout for sign-on bonuses at an average of $17,763.

California continues to report the highest overall salaries in the nation, though only 40% of offers included a sign-on bonus, with a lower average amount ($10,931) than other states.

Curious how your pay stacks up to the market? Get a free personalized salary estimate for your location and nursing credentials.

Technology and social media trends

Every year brings new technology and increased usage of social media throughout the US economy. For nurses in the healthcare industry, the impact of these trends is mixed.

Nurses use social media for community and support. Well over half (60%) of nurses believe it is important to use social media as a nurse in today’s healthcare industry, with 77% of respondents saying it’s a source of community and support. Additionally:

  • 52% of nurses said they communicate with their health systems via social media. 
  • The number of nurses engaging in Incredible Health’s mobile apps and social media communities is at an all-time high, pointing to the importance of these products.

We continue to invest in Incredible Health’s nurse community, accessible for free in our iOS and Android apps, and our rapidly growing social media nurse communities.

AI and virtual nursing are trending topics, yet most nurses still haven’t experienced the impact of the technologies firsthand. 

  • Nurse sentiment toward AI in healthcare is split as half think it will make a positive impact on the industry, and half disagree. 
  • 63% of nurses feel AI used within the industry could potentially create an imbalance between older and younger generations in the healthcare system.
  • Just one-fourth (25%) of nurses reported their health systems are using virtual nursing.

Looking ahead: areas for improvement

Many recent improvements in key areas of the nursing industry are likely due to market forces, hospital executive attention, and increased media attention over the course of the past year. However, there are several identifiable areas where additional progress would significantly impact the overall nursing experience and make the field more attractive to Americans considering pursuing the profession. 

A majority of nurses (84%) do not think the healthcare industry is improving fast enough when it comes to addressing understaffing, burnout, and pay – so our time to act is now. 

chart showing top nurse concerns, with staff shortages at top followed by burnout

Staffing shortages remain a top issue. The vast majority (93%) of nurses reported that staffing shortages have worsened over the last year. It’s no surprise that, as a result, 73% point to inadequate staffing as their top concern in the industry, and 55% report being dissatisfied with the current staffing in their own facilities. 

Burnout closely follows staffing as a main concern for nurses in the field and is the top reason nurses would leave the industry ahead of retirement.

Nurses are frustrated by compensation gaps. One-third (33%) of nurses reported feeling fairly compensated in their roles. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of nurses shared that they have considered shifting from a permanent role to a travel nurse role primarily for a pay increase.

Nurses are not immune to the economic climate. 84% reported increased stress at work due to the state of the broader economy, and 69% of nurses reported being impacted by the economic downturn. Those surveyed pointed to layoffs, delayed retirement, and a need to pick up additional jobs to make ends meet as ways they were impacted. 

Nurses value clear communication from their employers, and 59% of nurses reported feeling dissatisfied with how their organization addressed recent economic concerns with staff.

Incredible Health continues to work closely with health systems to address these specific areas. In fact, 75% of the nation’s top-ranked health systems trust us with finding their most important resource: top, permanent nursing talent to deliver high-quality care. Sharing best practices, including stronger operational excellence in hiring, such as direct hiring manager scheduling and same-day job offers, has helped increase hiring of permanent staff.

Incredible Health also provides analytics to benchmark speed, conversion rates, brand, and salaries of hospitals with their local and national competitors. Hospitals using Incredible Health hire nurses in fewer than 20 days–decreasing the stress on nurses with understaffing concerns.

An Incredible opportunity for progress

While there is room for improvement across the field, we have seen noticeable signs of progress in key areas. Incredible Health is proud of the work we do to help healthcare workers live better lives and ensure health systems remain properly staffed to provide excellent care to patients. 

If your hospital is looking for a better way to hire and retain nurses, click here. Incredible Health’s award-winning marketplace technology helps your talent acquisition team hire permanent, experienced nurses in 20 days or less, save at least $2 million per year per facility, and improve nurse retention.

If you’re a nurse looking to take control of your career and access Incredible Health’s suite of services for free, click here.

You can download the visual report that includes more data from the State of US Nursing Report here.

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Methodology

We analyzed hiring data from more than 700,000 Incredible Health nurse profiles in March 2023. We also surveyed more than 3,000 registered nurses in the United States in March 2023.

Iman Abuzeid, M.D., is the co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health, the largest career marketplace for permanent healthcare workers, with the mission of helping healthcare professionals live better lives, and find and do their best work. The company founded in 2017, has raised $100 million from top venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and health systems Kaiser Permanente and Johns Hopkins, and is valued at $1.65 billion, making Iman one of the few CEOs to run a “unicorn” startup (a company valued at over $1 billion). Iman is an MD, and holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Iman’s immediate family has 3 surgeons, and as a doctor herself, she understands the importance of choosing the right stepping stones in a clinical career. It’s what drives her belief in Incredible Health and its potential to reliably help clinicians manage their career.

Read more from Iman

Incredible Health Now Used by One in Four Nurses and 75% of Top-Ranked U.S. Hospitals

2022 was a milestone year for Incredible Health. Between launching our third annual Nursing In The Time Of COVID-19 report to provide a pulse check on the industry, releasing our New Nurse Graduate Suite to help the next generation of nurses thrive in the field, and raising an $80M Series B round of funding, it’s a year we are really proud of. Incredible Health’s valuation is now $1.65 billion, making us the highest-valued tech-enabled healthcare career marketplace. And we’re not stopping…

Today, we’re thrilled to share another exciting milestone: one in four nurses in the United States is now using Incredible Health for planning and managing their careers. We are also now partnered with 75% of the nation’s top-ranked health systems. This momentum and growth solidifies our place as the leader in healthcare labor, and helps us further realize our vision of helping healthcare professionals live better lives.

The State of Nurse Hiring

Nurse hiring is outdated and underserving both hospitals and nurses alike. The traditional hospital hiring process takes over 80 days. Our tech-enabled career platform cuts this process down to around 14 days. That means nurses are finding their dream permanent roles faster while health systems fill critical gaps in a fraction of the time it usually takes. It’s a win-win!

We automate the job hunting process for nurses, putting them in the driver’s seat and providing access to tens of thousands of permanent jobs at hundreds of top health systems across the United States. Our product supports thousands of nurses per week with free tools and services to help provide salary transparency, complete CEU requirements, combat burnout, and connect with other nurses on our platform – all critical to retaining nurses in the field and championing their ability to thrive in their careers.

Over the past year, we’ve seen:

  • An increase in nurses joining the platform. 300% more nurses joined Incredible Health year over year, with 12,000 nurses joining our platform every week over the past three months. 
  • An increase in interview requests sent to nurses. Hospitals send 10,000 interview requests to nurses via Incredible Health each week (a 600% annual increase), thanks to our proprietary matching technology. 
  • An increase in job openings. 280% more permanent jobs have been added to our platform in the last year, increasing the chances of a nurse finding their dream permanent role. 
  • Top ratings from nurses. We’ve been rated and reviewed nearly 2,000 times across the App Store, Google and Facebook reviews with a 4.9 star average. Customer obsession, which includes driving delightful experiences, is our top company value, so we’re incredibly proud of this accomplishment.
  • More nurses connecting with one another. Our free nurse-to-nurse community remains a key tool nurses turn to to ask questions and get advice and support from other nurses. 

When health systems use Incredible Health, they know they are reaching top talent and are able to seamlessly move nurses through the hiring process. Our national reach and custom matching technology give employers access to the nation’s top nurses that were previously inaccessible to them. If health systems want top permanent talent, they know Incredible Health is the place to find it.

We’ve continued to drive results for health systems: 

  • Higher retention rates. Nurses hired via our platform have a 15% higher retention rate.
  • A greater pool of talent and choice. We are used by over 650 hospital locations spanning 26 states and help employers hire top talent from all 50 states. 60% of hospital beds in California and Texas are in facilities that hire permanent nurses via Incredible Health.
  • More savings. Incredible Health continues to save health systems at least $2 million per hospital facility per year in travel nurse, overtime, and HR costs. We’ve saved health systems using our marketplace $500 million in the last 12 months.
  • A shorter hiring timeline. Open roles are filled in 14 days, versus the national average of 80+ days. 

Health systems love our platform (we have 98% employer retention!) and we keep innovating to continue revolutionizing healthcare hiring.

Looking Ahead

Incredible Health has changed the lives of thousands of nurses and their families this past year despite the challenging circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have not only helped nurses find their dream permanent jobs, but we’ve also helped them relocate to new cities, advance their careers, and get the resources they need to do their best work. Nurses who feel fulfilled in their work deliver better care and stay in roles longer – both of which are critical to combat the nursing shortage head-on and imperative for health systems’ success. We’re excited to continue our growth and impact nurses and health systems across the nation. Here’s to 2023 being another landmark year!

Are you a hospital interested in how Incredible Health can increase your permanent nurse hiring to 14 days or less? Sign up for a free consultation here.

Are you a nurse looking to take more control of your career? Sign up here. Our hiring tools are always free for nurses. 

We are hiring! Check out our open roles if you’re interested in joining the fastest-growing career marketplace for healthcare professionals at incrediblehealth.com/careers.

Iman Abuzeid, M.D., is the co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health, the largest career marketplace for permanent healthcare workers, with the mission of helping healthcare professionals live better lives, and find and do their best work. The company founded in 2017, has raised $100 million from top venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and health systems Kaiser Permanente and Johns Hopkins, and is valued at $1.65 billion, making Iman one of the few CEOs to run a “unicorn” startup (a company valued at over $1 billion). Iman is an MD, and holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Iman’s immediate family has 3 surgeons, and as a doctor herself, she understands the importance of choosing the right stepping stones in a clinical career. It’s what drives her belief in Incredible Health and its potential to reliably help clinicians manage their career.

Read more from Iman

Incredible Health Broadens Executive Bench With New Chief Financial Officer

We are thrilled to welcome Sid Agarwal to the Incredible Health team as our Chief Financial Officer!  

Sid looks forward to applying his experience in finance at high-growth startups to his new role on our team. Before joining Incredible Health, Sid was the VP of Finance & Strategy at Airtable and VP of Operations at Instacart. 

During his 5 years at Instacart, Sid led the teams responsible for growth and profitability across its markets. During that time Instacart’s sales grew 60X. He spearheaded efforts to launch new markets and service lines, elevated customer experience, and improved unit economics. At Airtable, Sid built the finance and accounting functions and led initiatives to build an enterprise go-to-market, which led to >130% revenue growth in less than a year.

We sat down with him to hear about his background and why he’s excited to join Incredible Health. 

How did you get started in the healthcare space?

Growing up, I spent a lot of time in healthcare settings as my parents work in the field. During long weekend shifts, my sister and I tagged along to the hospitals they worked in. As I got older, I spent summers volunteering at nursing homes and working odd jobs at hospitals and medical offices. I was always inspired by the passion and sense of purpose I saw in my parents and the people I met. I knew I’d make my way back to the healthcare space eventually.

It’s been interesting to see how healthcare has evolved over the last few decades. We’re in the early days of exciting innovation in care delivery spurred by the shift to value-based care and the adoption of new technologies such as telemedicine. Unfortunately, the experience of healthcare professionals remains largely unchanged. They’re highly underserved by technology, and I find that to be a compelling opportunity to make a change. It’s personal for me.  

Tell us more about your role at Incredible Health. 

At Incredible Health, we want to quickly grow our marketplace for hospitals and nurses while building a sustainable and valuable business. My role as CFO is to make financially-informed decisions on the investments that will drive growth and to evaluate metrics and indicators to determine what’s working and what needs to be changed.  

Even though there are a lot of levers we can pull to improve the experience for nurses and employers, we can’t do everything all at once. The key is to parse through all of our data, feedback from talent and employers, and past experience in enterprise software and marketplaces to figure out what we should prioritize. From there, multiple teams, including engineering, product, operations, sales, customer success, and marketing, work together to make those ideas happen.

What brought you to Incredible Health?

Three things drew me to Incredible Health.

1. The mission 

Healthcare‘s now the largest employer sector in our country. We want to build technology and experiences that enable healthcare professionals to find and do their best work. This is such a large and important problem, and I find that exciting.

2. The business model and network effect

Incredible Health’s building both enterprise software for employers to speed up and improve hiring and a marketplace to connect hospitals and nurses. I love marketplaces because they become better and stronger as you scale. Every hospital or nurse that joins our platform makes it more valuable for everyone else on the platform.  

3. The culture

I was struck by how deeply everyone on the team cares about our customers – both nurses and employers. I was also impressed by how relentless they have been in pushing through countless barriers to serve and build for our customers.

Have you had an experience with a nurse that made a positive impact on you? 

I have two children, a 2-1/2-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy. Both deliveries were complicated. But both came home safe and healthy thanks to the nurses at UCSF. 

It was so inspiring to see the labor and delivery and pediatric nurses in action. They were experts at their craft and knowledgeable, which helped keep us calm and focused during both births. I vividly remember both experiences and am always moved by how the nurses conducted themselves.

What interests are you exploring in your free time? 

I recently started playing tennis again after a long hiatus. I’m also teaching my kids how to swim, which is an excellent way for me to get back into swimming.

Interested in a career at the fastest-growing, venture-backed career marketplace for healthcare workers? We’re hiring! 

Iman Abuzeid, M.D., is the co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health, the largest career marketplace for permanent healthcare workers, with the mission of helping healthcare professionals live better lives, and find and do their best work. The company founded in 2017, has raised $100 million from top venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and health systems Kaiser Permanente and Johns Hopkins, and is valued at $1.65 billion, making Iman one of the few CEOs to run a “unicorn” startup (a company valued at over $1 billion). Iman is an MD, and holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Iman’s immediate family has 3 surgeons, and as a doctor herself, she understands the importance of choosing the right stepping stones in a clinical career. It’s what drives her belief in Incredible Health and its potential to reliably help clinicians manage their career.

Read more from Iman

We raised an $80M Series B, reaching $1.65B unicorn status as the leader in healthcare hiring

Five years ago, we founded Incredible Health with the vision of helping healthcare professionals live better lives, and a mission of helping healthcare workers find and do their best work. Today marks a significant step in fulfilling that mission with the announcement of $80M in Series B funding, valuing the company at $1.65B. As the highest valued tech-enabled career marketplace in healthcare, we’ve transformed how nurses are hired and will build on this work to help health systems and healthcare workers manage surging patient demand in the midst of a national labor crisis.

We know this work is critical. We are facing the largest labor crisis in the history of US healthcare, on track to be 1 million nurses short by the end of 2023. Our need for healthcare is increasing with an aging population but the supply of healthcare workers has not kept up with demand. This shortfall has devastating effects on an overworked nursing workforce, to the point where one-third of US nurses are considering leaving the profession by the end of 2022, citing burnout and excessive stress. We are committed to addressing both sides of this crisis with tech-enabled support and services for the US nursing workforce, including free continuing education, personalized advice access, career coaching and more, as well as providing an easy way for health systems to find great talent.

This new funding comes on the heels of several major milestones for Incredible Health over the last 18 months. In 2021, revenue grew 500% as our marketplace grew exponentially. More than 10,000 US nurses now join Incredible Health’s platform every single week, and we’ve expanded from partnering with 200 hospitals to 600 hospitals. Our marketplace technology has reduced the average time to hire permanent nurses to only 14 days – from an industry standard of 82 days – while saving each hospital location at least $2M annually in travel nurse, overtime, and HR costs. 

Our model has met the moment. This would not have been possible without the relentless belief and continuous feedback from hospital leaders and teams that have improved our product and services, nurses who trust us to support them with seamless job searches and immediate access to career advancement, and the passion and dedication of the Incredible Health team.

A California health system CEO puts it best: “These past few years have brought many lessons learned, but one of the biggest is the importance of really listening to our nurses, and right now – nurses need more nurses. We’re glad to have streamlined our internal hiring operations to move past conventional time – with Incredible Health stepping in to do the heavy lifting. The company truly understands what our workforce needs and provides the right technology and support to see their mission through.”

We are fortunate to have the financial backing of investing teams with missions that align with ours. I’m grateful to consistently be in a position to be very selective about which investment teams to collaborate with, even in a challenging macroeconomic climate. Base10 Partners led our financing round as part of their Advancement Initiative, a fund designed to align the success of tech companies with wealth creation for underrepresented minorities. The Advancement Initiative invests in leading pre-IPO companies, including Devoted Health, Notion, Figma, and Plaid, and donates 50% of the fund’s carried interest to Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) to create student scholarships and support university endowments. Base10 Partners and Incredible Health are also working together to create scholarship initiatives for nurses. 

Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz’s Cultural Leadership Fund, and Obvious Ventures returned for investment. New investors include Workday CEO Chano Fernandez, NBA Champion Andre Iguodala, Rethink Impact, and Stardust Equity. The D’Amelio family, including top TikTok personalities Charli and Dixie D’Amelio who have over 150 million TikTok followers, also joined the round via their 444 Capital Fund. This comes as we continue growing Incredible Health’s social media presence among millennial and GenZ healthcare workers.

For the first time, Incredible Health’s customers invested in our mission. Top tier health systems from the West Coast and East Coast including Kaiser Permanente participated in the round, validating Incredible Health’s market leadership among the best hospitals and health systems in the country. 

We will use this funding to continue improving the lives of nurses and other healthcare workers, and drive innovation in healthcare hiring. We plan to:

  • Optimize every aspect of the hiring workflow with machine learning technology, including screening and matching, to an increasingly personalized and automated experience for both healthcare workers and employers.
  • Support nurses and other healthcare workers over the course of their entire careers, beyond finding permanent jobs, including skill growth, scheduling services, mobility and relocation support, cross-training, and educational scholarships.
  • Enhance Incredible Health’s tech-enabled nurse community with personalized advice and content ranking, ensuring that Incredible Health continues to be the largest online community of nurses and other healthcare workers.
  • Expand and scale to 90% of the U.S. nurse workforce, and support healthcare worker roles beyond nursing that have critical shortages.

Nurses are the backbone of the US healthcare system and they deserve the well-staffed teams and tools to not only succeed, but also feel fulfilled in their careers. We’re excited to accelerate our growth to affect even more change for US healthcare workers and health systems.

P.S. Are you a health system interested in how Incredible Health can increase your permanent nurse hiring to 14 days or less? Sign up for a free consultation here.

Are you a nurse looking to take more control of your career? Sign up here. Our hiring tools are always free for nurses. 

We are hiring! Check out our open roles if you’re interested in joining the fastest-growing career marketplace for healthcare professionals at incrediblehealth.com/careers.

Iman Abuzeid, M.D., is the co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health, the largest career marketplace for permanent healthcare workers, with the mission of helping healthcare professionals live better lives, and find and do their best work. The company founded in 2017, has raised $100 million from top venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and health systems Kaiser Permanente and Johns Hopkins, and is valued at $1.65 billion, making Iman one of the few CEOs to run a “unicorn” startup (a company valued at over $1 billion). Iman is an MD, and holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Iman’s immediate family has 3 surgeons, and as a doctor herself, she understands the importance of choosing the right stepping stones in a clinical career. It’s what drives her belief in Incredible Health and its potential to reliably help clinicians manage their career.

Read more from Iman

Roe v. Wade Overturned: What It Means for Nurses

On Friday, June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court took action that has a profound effect on Nurses and the care they provide to their patients. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion in the United States in its ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. This decision overturned the 50-year-old precedent set in Roe v. Wade and the more recent Casey [Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1992] that had enshrined and defined the right to abortion in the United States.

While much of the attention on the court’s decision has focused on those seeking to terminate their pregnancies, the ruling also represents a sea change for abortion centers, healthcare systems, and individual healthcare practitioners, including nurses, around the country. 

Currently, there are 64 million women of reproductive age (15 to 44 years) in the United States. Of these, 43% (29 million) live in states with a high number of abortion restrictions.

Almost every Nurse specialty affected

The court’s decision will impact every aspect of reproductive care, and as a result, every Registered Nurse or Nurse Practitioner who cares for child-bearing patients or children will also be affected. The changes to the laws will likely create ripple effects in specialty areas and departments, across acute care and ambulatory settings (inpatient and outpatient) including:

  • Emergency / Trauma 
  • Labor & Delivery
  • Pediatric
  • Psychiatric & Mental Health
  • NICU
  • PICU
  • Family Health
  • Public Health

Though the state bans’ intention is a cessation of abortions, research shows that abortion bans do not stop people from terminating their pregnancies. Note that “abortion” is the medical term for termination of a pregnancy – encompassing both unwanted and wanted pregnancies, including spontaneous and induced expulsion. Many patients who are denied access to legal and safe abortions will seek risky alternatives and need emergency care, or may travel farther distances to clinics in states where the service is still legal and safe. 

It’s important to note that the states’ bans apply to wanted pregnancies too, and a wide range of conditions. Nurses are likely to see more patients who require treatment for ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, and other life-threatening physical conditions exacerbated or created by their pregnancies, including mental health emergencies. There is also a high likelihood that NICU and PICU Nurses will see higher numbers of newborns in distress, and pediatric Nurses may find themselves caring for more pregnant and postpartum patients.

Nurses are likely to see increased patient loads to treat these cases, and there are challenging questions of how to counsel, support, and manage patient care in states where providing care carries a risk of legal action for the healthcare professional.

Wide range of patients affected and more maternal death 

While care in many states and the District of Columbia will be unaffected by the court’s ruling, there are 13 states that have so-called “trigger laws” designed to outlaw abortion as soon as Roe was overturned. These states’ abortion bans have either already gone into effect or are likely to be implemented in the coming days. 

While the minority of people impacted by these restrictions will be patients seeking unwanted pregnancy termination at abortion clinics, the majority will be others seeking wanted pregnancy-induced abortions and non-abortion-related treatments. These include people experiencing:

  • Ectopic pregnancies
  • Life-threatening pregnancies
  • Stillbirths
  • Miscarriages
  • Congenital issues from IVF
  • Side effects of drugs that cause birth defects
  • Non-viable pregnancies

Research studies show that estimated pregnancy-related deaths increase by 21% when there is an abortion ban in place. Public health studies demonstrate that denying all wanted induced abortions in the United States would increase pregnancy-related mortality substantially even if the rate of unsafe abortion does not increase.

Marginalized patients especially at risk

The wide range of medical conditions does not account for marginalized groups who will feel outsized impacts from the change. Nurses should be aware that certain groups will be more affected than others.

Patients who already experience discrimination in the healthcare system based on race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, gender presentation, or other factors will face an outsized impact from new laws restricting abortion access. 

Hispanic and Black patients are two such groups. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of April 2022, Black patients are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white patients, due to “variation in quality of healthcare, underlying chronic conditions, structural racism, and implicit bias.”

A full abortion ban may exacerbate this more, according to Amanda Jean Stevenson, a sociologist at the University of Colorado Boulder. She estimates that a full abortion ban could lead to a 33% increase in pregnancy-related deaths for Black patients, compared to a 21% increase overall, “even if people denied legal access to abortion do not resort to unsafe procedures.”

Unlike wealthier residents of abortion-restricted states, low-income residents likely won’t be able to travel in order to access legal abortions, according to Northeastern economist Alicia Modestino. 

Restricted access to abortion will exacerbate existing economic disparities between patient populations. One study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that when compared with those who received an abortion, “women denied an abortion were more likely to experience economic hardship and insecurity lasting years.”

Limitations to counsel patients and legal risk for nurses

Among the challenges, Nurses will encounter is the tension between the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics and the laws newly enacted by their states. 

Under the code of ethics, Nurses have vowed to do the following:

“compassion and respect for the inherent dignity, worth, and unique attributes of every person. The Nurse’s primary commitment is to the patient, whether an individual, family, group, community, or population. The Nurse promotes, advocates for, and protects the rights, health, and safety of the patient.”

However, now many healthcare professionals may find themselves prohibited from upholding this commitment.

With the current lack of clarity, hospitals may encourage Nurses to seek legal approval before providing their patients with any guidance, advocacy, or even support, even in emergency situations.

Nurses are likely to see patients who need procedures that were recently considered standard care but now require special approvals. The delays put patients’ lives at risk.

These procedures include treatment of ectopic pregnancies, providing dilatation and curettage, emotional support as aftercare for miscarriages, and even care for patients who have suffered the tragedy of stillbirth. 

Debates in the workplace

Beyond the legal and ethical issues that Nurses must face in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, it is likely that they will face challenges in the workplace as colleagues take sides in this emotional issue. 

Just as happened during the COVID-19 pandemic – including hospital and health systems or state vaccine mandates, it is likely that coworkers will disagree over how to best manage patients negatively affected by the new laws. Understandably, this may make an already stressful work environment even more challenging. 

It is important that Nurses and other healthcare professionals maintain professionalism and remain calm, remembering that the well-being of patients is their primary goal. If you need additional support, seek help from management or your human resources department.

Conclusion 

Nurses dedicated to — and responsible for — patient care will need a full understanding of what is and is not legal in the states where they work, and what they are and are not allowed to do. While some states will allow abortion services under certain circumstances, others make assisting in an abortion or abortion-associated services under any circumstances, punishable by imprisonment.

Sources

Iman Abuzeid, M.D., is the co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health, the largest career marketplace for permanent healthcare workers, with the mission of helping healthcare professionals live better lives, and find and do their best work. The company founded in 2017, has raised $100 million from top venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and health systems Kaiser Permanente and Johns Hopkins, and is valued at $1.65 billion, making Iman one of the few CEOs to run a “unicorn” startup (a company valued at over $1 billion). Iman is an MD, and holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Iman’s immediate family has 3 surgeons, and as a doctor herself, she understands the importance of choosing the right stepping stones in a clinical career. It’s what drives her belief in Incredible Health and its potential to reliably help clinicians manage their career.

Read more from Iman