Is the pool of nurses still aging too? I’ve not been in the US for 12 years, but one of the big problems was that the average age of a nurse was increasing - meaning that younger nurses weren’t entering the field.
it’s been known for a long time that the best performing (in terms of outcome and patient satisfaction) units have adequate nursing staff.
From my experience, a lot of the nurses who stay working in the unit are older/have been there for a long time. I think it has to do with the fact that due to seniority and therefore expertise, they don't need to do as much bedside duties anymore, like taking a full patient load. They tend to be in the positions of team leading, triage, doing charge instead. It's easier and this is absolutely fine. However, if there's not enough staffing, the younger nurses get bombarded with heavy workloads. As a result, they get burnt out quickly and leave bedside to pursue nursing fields that are not as tough on the body and mind... Retention of younger nurses is not as good, from what I've seen, as they choose to pursue higher education or do outpatient instead -- it's honestly easier physically, mentally etc.
In short, yes, we have an aging nurse population, which contributes to the nursing shortage as they start to retire, but there's also a lot of younger nurses leaving the bedside because of burnout, which contributes even more to the shortage.
Its a big profitable business here getting nursing staff from eastern Europe and exploiting them in the private nursing. Often they earn no more than 2000CHF a month.
The trouble is is that the nursing profession is seen as more of the last choice for alot of the young. Why? Because of the bad reports of how it is to work in nursing. Underpaid,stress,mobbing,overtime,bad working hours and the list goes on.
The big advantage of nursing, though, is that is is very, very well-suited to working part-time. I've known people who've deliberately first done a nursing apprenticeship so that they could later fund their university studies. And both fathers and mothers who chose nursing so that they could have the time to spend with their children during the week.
Thank you @doropfiz and @omtatsat for your thoughtful responses.
Nursing has so benefits but also a lot of things that can be improved upon. I love the flexible scheduling, shift differentials, portability, ability to change specialties. I do wish though that there are more accessible and affordable schools (nursing major is often impacted, some schools are cutting down on BSN admissions in favor of MSNs, some are pushing for the ADN to RN to BSN route because it's more profitable; I also know of some friends who got suckered into private nursing programs and owe at least 100K), strict staffing rules (nurse-patient ratios), lack of proper internship programs in different specialties (I think Skilled Nursing Facilities should have these), adequate compensation (competitive wages, sick days and vacation time off, child care etc), interdisciplinary and patient-provider education regarding codes of conduct (which means, providers and patients need to learn how to treat each other respectfully -- sad that this needs to be said), to attract and retain people in the health care field.
The health insurance companies here demand that everything in hospital and nursing homes is 100% documented. Cost control. And this takes alot of time.
"Manuela Weichelt-Picard (Greens / ZG) reminded of the 46 percent dropouts from the nursing profession. "I gave up the nursing profession myself," she said. The lack of attractiveness and independence, but also the mismatch between wages and requirements were reasons for this."
Thank you for the article, I used Google translate From what I understand, they are trying to find solutions to address the nursing shortage. There are a lot of auxiliary nursing staff who could be trained to hold higher degrees (better education = better care) but some worry that doing so would increase healthcare costs/insurance premiums? And they're also thinking of shifting nursing staff from inpatient to outpatient to cut costs? This is the first time that I'm reading having nurses bill insurance companies independently.
I find it so interesting that many places require nurses to have a degree + certifications but do not compensate them or treat them accordingly as skilled professionals.
I keep coming back to this, as the core of why the shortage won't get any better any time soon: