Across the country, hospitals are experiencing staffing shortages, and two years of COVID-19 have taken their toll on the industry.
The pandemic didn’t cause the staffing shortage. However, it exacerbated a growing problem as more nurses opted to retire or leave the profession.
Amid the pandemic, many healthcare professionals burned out while others left the workforce altogether. As a result, many hospitals and physicians’ offices struggle to hire and retain nurses.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) has raised the alarm about the ongoing nursing shortage. As older Americans — especially Baby Boomers — age and their demands for health care increase, the association has indicated that the problem will only worsen.
Additionally, nursing schools aren’t keeping up with the higher demand for nurses.
It’s a situation the industry must prioritize to solve before it is too late. However, no single approach will be the definitive solution.
Hospitals have considered and implemented various approaches to combat these challenges.
Traveling nurses have grown increasingly common — especially in rural environments where it is even harder to recruit professionals. These nurses potentially allow hospitals to expand their offerings or bring in more specialists without needing to hire additional full-time staff. This can be a double-edged sword as traveling nurses can be expensive.
Why the need for more nurses is real.
Many rural hospitals and clinics struggle with a disproportionate level of diseases, geographical barriers, and elderly patients. Technology that is cumbersome, expensive, and difficult or time-consuming to use often does little to help.
In 2020 and 2021, companies in every industry struggled with the Great Resignation, and the healthcare industry was no exception. Rural providers feel the fallout of national healthcare trends more acutely.
Rural regions have a population density of less than 19%. Residents in such areas frequently travel further to receive healthcare, but they shouldn’t have to settle for a lesser patient experience.
Clinics and hospitals have suffered significant attrition in their staff, leaving the remaining team members overworked and burnt out, resulting in patients receiving less overall and quality care. Patients should not be asked to bear the brunt of this reality.
While it isn’t likely that rural communities will build more hospitals, especially given the latest trend of hospital closures, traveling nurses are one way these communities can supplement the nurses working in the area.
Hiring more nurses is just one answer.
Solving the nursing shortage must include solutions beyond increasing the headcount.
Consider numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which indicate roughly 175,900 openings for registered nurses every year through 2029. But nursing schools are only graduating about 155,000 registered nurses annually.
Even if hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices want to hire more nurses, they likely won’t be able to do so. To lessen the nursing shortage’s impact, the industry must explore other solutions, including technology.
Hospitals need to simplify their digital workflows to ease the strain on their remaining staff and stem the tide of burnout. This will lessen team members’ time to learn a hospital’s IT system, allowing them to focus more on their patients.
Traveling nurses will be in high demand, especially in rural areas. However, rural providers must compete with larger, wealthier hospitals, whose recruiters will poach staff with lucrative offers.
Traveling nurses need technology to be successful.
Traveling nurses are expected to hit the ground running; their time is vital, and every minute spent trying to learn a new chart or how to transfer patients on the hospital’s unique IT system is time spent away from patients eager to see a doctor.
Organizations can deploy technology in several ways to help traveling nurses work seamlessly within their systems. The most effective way is using data analytics.
Traveling nurses can’t spend days or weeks learning new technology when they need to be helping hospitals and patients. But that is often what happens with complicated systems.
The best and quickest way to train and help get nurses up to speed on technology is to start with a system they can easily learn and use. Analyzing data helps team members to focus their limited time on at-risk patients, and it helps traveling nurses unfamiliar with patients get up to speed.
The same holds true for patient records.
Electronic health records (EHR) have transformed the patient experience. Traveling nurses can view patients’ records long before they arrive on-site, allowing them to maximize their time for patients. Organizations can use a similar approach to share any unique policies and procedures in advance.
As we continue to emerge from the pandemic, providers must continue to find creative solutions to solve long-standing problems. They must employ new strategies and more positive and aggressive outlooks around employee well-being, productivity, and retention.
The industry may be unable to solve or mitigate the nursing shortage overnight. But with the right technology, the industry can at least ease the pain it feels from the nursing shortage — and help providers focus on delivering the quality experience patients deserve.
About Khue Tran
Khue Tran is the SVP of operations for Azalea Health. She loves cross-functional collaboration and her passionn is aligning business strategy and objectives to Azalea’s people, process and technology to effectively execute, scale and grow. Tran holds an MBA from the University of Florida and a Bachelor of Science from Florida State University.
