Nursing professionals know better than anybody how the nursing shortage is affecting healthcare. You know what it’s doing to morale, you’re worried about what it’s doing to patient care, and you’re wondering what can be done to address the situation.
You’re not alone in your concern.
This week, Incredible Health releases its 2023 Healthcare Executive Report, an anonymous survey of executives from 100 hospitals and health systems conducted in May of this year. We asked these employers to give us their honest feedback and opinions on nurse staffing, which all agreed is one of the most pressing issues facing their facilities.
Their answers provide real insight into what’s happening in the C-suites of some of the nation’s largest health systems, as well as in academic medical centers, regional systems, and community hospitals. We’ve compiled the most important information gathered from the report to let you know what hospitals are planning to do to attract nurses, including:
- Creating more desirable shifts for nurses
- Providing more educational resources and career development opportunities
- Improved compensation models
Perhaps the most important thing for nurses to know is that the executives who are running the hospitals are well aware of how dire the continuing (and worsening) nursing situation is.
- 94% of health system executives who participated in the survey describe the severity of the nursing shortage in their facilities as critical
- 68% of health system executives who participated in the survey said that they do not have adequate nursing staff to manage another large-scale health crisis
While health systems are continuing to feel the effects of the pandemic, many of which have been exacerbated by inflationary pressure, there’s no question that the nursing shortage is at the top of their list of concerns. They acknowledge a disconnect between their nursing workforce and their administration when it comes to recruitment, and that challenge is combined with diminishing retention rates, a disproportionate percentage of nurses with less than five years of experience, and a growing need for nurses in specialty areas.
To answer these challenges and address critical gaps, the executives acknowledge having turned to travel nurses — in fact, 93% have used them to an astonishing degree: when asked what percentage of their nursing staff is temporary, 25% of participants answered between 6 and 15%, and another 25% said between 16 and 25%. While almost all (97%) said they plan to prioritize permanent nursing staff over temporary staff, 55% admitted to having increased the number of travel nurses their health system or hospital used in the past year.
Today’s nursing professionals have different expectations than those of the past, and administrators say that they are working hard to meet those needs. The survey revealed that more flexible scheduling is the top request that they receive, with more compensation a very close second. Both older and younger nurses want more remote work opportunities, while younger nurses are extremely interested in career advancement and specialized roles. Different hospitals are responding to these shifting needs in different ways: most respond by increasing compensation for staff nurses (26% of respondents) and offering sign-on bonuses (35.4% of respondents) for new hires. But despite work-life balance being the top request of the very nurses they want to hire, hospitals admit that changes resulting in more flexible scheduling and improved patient-to-staff ratios are lagging behind, with just 11.5% offering the former and 15.6 working toward the latter.
The admitted disconnect between what hospital executives are offering and what nurses want is resulting in the continued crisis, and it is difficult to say when that gap will be closed. Though 70% of administrators point to nurses quitting the industry all together or retiring for the nurse shortage, almost 60% say that there aren’t enough new nurses entering the field.
With so many nurses leaving their employers and a dearth of new nurses graduating, experience and qualifications are the top things that hospitals say they are looking for when they’re hiring, and that is especially true for nurses in specialty areas. There is a significant overlap in the nurse specialties that executives say are most critical to their health system and the ones they have the hardest time hiring, with Med/Surg nurses, Emergency Department nurses, Critical Care nurses, and OR/Surgical nurses presenting the greatest challenge. Nurses who take advantage of their current employers’ continuing education and tuition reimbursement perks will find themselves of significant value where they currently work as well as at any future employer.
If you’d like to see the full 2023 Healthcare Executive Report, you can find it here.
If you’re a nurse looking to improve your professional standing and advance your career, start by accessing Incredible Health’s suite of free services here.
