We are celebrating Nurses Week and have rounded up thoughts and insights from nurses, about nurses, and about nursing.
What we are hearing from Nurses
Jennifer Fitisemanu (RN), Consulting Architect for Epic Services, CereCore
Twitter: @CereCore
Medical advancements have correlated to nurses needing an increasingly complex knowledge of the patient’s condition, intervention and treatments. Technology advancement has increased the amount of data at the nurse’s fingertips to monitor patient status and deliver fine-tuned treatment at the patient level. In addition, data-driven documentation is needed to keep pace with the ever-changing landscape of healthcare compliance. Combined together, the nurse “at elbow” caring for the patient must be seen as a top priority. Reducing the administrative burdens and keeping the nurse engaged in caring for patients is vital to patient outcomes.
Lisbeth Votruba, MSN, RN, Chief Clinical Officer, AvaSure
Twitter: @AvaSure
I’m a third-generation nurse who has been in this noble profession for 35 years. The challenges nurses face are well known, from staffing to burn out to increasing patient complexity. As a fellow nurse, I am incredibly proud to be part of this noble profession. Nurses are not only the backbone of healthcare they are also leaders in healthcare, transforming care delivery through ongoing education and research. I want to take this opportunity to thank all the nurses I work with for their unwavering commitment to their patients and their communities. Your tireless dedication, compassion and expertise are truly inspiring! Happy National Nurses Week 2023!
Mary Russell, MJ, BS, RN, Sr. Director, Clinical Implementation, CliniComp
Twitter: @CliniCompIntl
As the top ranked most trusted profession, nurses need the freedom to use critical thinking skills and enjoy collaborative relationships with providers and administrators to relieve current workplace stressors. Leaders who understand these challenges and offer a reliable system to streamline documentation and optimize workflows to allow nurses to focus on the patient will be the ones to retain these vital clinicians. It’s time to bring the happiness back to healthcare.
Kelly McCullough, DNP, APRN, Dean of Quality and Effectiveness, Rasmussen University
Twitter: @Rasmussen
Nurses are faced with many challenges in 2023 that are very different from my experience as a new nurse thirty years ago. I have two daughters who joined the profession as Registered Nurses during the pandemic. The greatest challenges they have experienced are staffing shortages, lack of mentors, and violence in the workplace. The nursing shortage in our community post-pandemic, has been significant, as the expert nurse left the bedside. When I joined the profession, it was the expert nurses that served as my mentor and supported me in the development of my professional identity. The expert nurses reinforced standards of care and served as role models. The new generation of nurses are lucky to have peers that have been in the profession more than a couple of years. It is critical that Registered Nurses support each other to persist in the profession. The stressors of staffing shortages and workplace violence deter Registered Nurses from having longevity in the profession.
Michelle Zancan, RN, BSN, Senior Clinical Analyst, Zane Networks
Today, healthcare is growing at a pace that must be supported by highly interactive, interoperable technology. A person is surrounded by a web of services in local healthcare facilities, distant healthcare facilities (via telemedicine or internet resources), community social services, federal agencies, and beyond. Any single provider in this web is dependent on many of the other providers to actually make impactful, sustainable progress for the person in the center. We, as nurses, must advocate for more opportunities for ongoing education about technology, data, and data sharing. We have to recognize this is part of the job for ALL NURSES now… not just the ones who are in grad school!
Melissa Draper, RN, Director of Clinical Informatics, Heritage Operations Group LLC
The greatest challenge for nurses today is balance the heart of nursing and the politics of nursing. Nurses struggle with staffing shortages, shortage of supplies, and regulatory oversight while their hearts only care about taking care of the patients and residents.
What we are hearing about Nursing
The 2023 AMN biannual Healthcare Survey of Registered Nurses found that Nurse career satisfaction has been at 80-85% for a decade; in 2023, it dropped to 71%. Likelihood of encouraging others to become a nurse is down 14 points from 2021.
Every two years, NCSBN partners with The National Forum of State Nursing Workforce Centers to conduct the only national-level survey specifically focused on the U.S. nursing workforce. The analysis confirms that approximately 100,000 registered nurses and 34,000 licensed practical and vocational nurses left the workforce over the past two years specifically due to the pandemic. Alarmingly, 41% of the RN total is comprised of nurses with a mean age of 36 and fewer than 10 years’ work experience.
The National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (NSSRN) is sponsored by the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis of the Health Resources and Services Administration, an Agency in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Since the 1970s, the NSSRN has been the primary source of data on the nursing workforce, the largest group of health care professionals. The data from the NSSRN helps to evaluate and project the supply and demand of nursing resources.
Nearly a third of surveyed nurses still report an intent to leave their current jobs. Will hospitals’ efforts bend the curve? This is according to McKinsey & Company report: Nursing in 2023: How hospitals are confronting shortages.
The American Nurses Foundation (the Foundation) released the findings from a new comprehensive survey of more than 12,500 nurses nationwide as part of the Pulse on the Nation’s Nurses Survey Series. The results validate the urgent call for consistent and sustainable solutions to support the nursing profession, especially in key areas such as nurse burnout and workplace violence.
Geisinger’s Journey with Digital Whiteboards: Measuring the Impact a presentation in April at HIMSS23 in Chicago.
- Enterprise Digital Strategy is as an enabler to broader transformation
- Focus on patient experiences and transforming clinical care
- Replacing dry erase boards with digital featuring real time information; one of the foundational capabilities to modernizing the inpatient setting
Nursing Highlights:
- Average daily time savings of 30 minutes over manual updates to dry erase board
- Average of 1-2 daily real-time service recovery opportunities
- Daily Mobility improvement from 51% to 73%
Beth Friedman caught up with Jeff Fallon from Vibe Health at HIMSS. Hear what he said about the study.
