Understanding the Effects of Nursing Shortages and Turnover on Patient Care

Healthcare shortages are everywhere. How do they impact the communities that are suffering from them? If you’ve ever lived in in town that doesn’t have enough nurses, you may have already experienced the impact, even if you hadn’t realized it.

Long wait times. Frustrated hospital workers. Patients without options. These are just some of the negative ramifications that come from not having enough doctors and nurses to go around. In this article, we take a closer look at the problem and look at some potential solutions.

Why do nurses leave?

Unfortunately, there’s no single answer to that question. While many people assume it is because the work is difficult, that’s only part of the problem.

Not only do nurses do work that is emotionally draining but many find it difficult to establish an effective support system.

Many work 12-hour shifts. Sometimes they work at night and sleep while their loved ones are awake. Even those with regular contact with friends and family members can’t share their anxieties and expect the other person to understand what they’re going through. 

Your spouse may be incredibly supportive but unless they’ve watched someone die and then been expected to come home and sit down for a family dinner, they can’t fully understand your experiences.

While nursing school does prepare future RNs for some aspects of their future careers, nothing can fully communicate the physical, mental, and emotional difficulties of working in healthcare. Hospitals can reduce turnover to an extent by establishing better support networks, improving benefits, and generally looking for ways to accommodate their employees. However, there is no solution for the difficulty of the job itself.

Long Wait Times

One of the tamest, though also most frustrating consequences of staffing shortages is that patients are forced to wait longer and longer for routine appointments.

Who hasn’t waited at a hospital or emergency room for an interminably long time?

Fortunately, there are solutions to this problem. Telehealth services make it easier for patients to have simple healthcare questions answered from the comfort of their homes. This puts less pressure on the local healthcare network. 

With doctors and nurses answering basic concerns through virtual messaging patients who need in-person consultations will usually have less of a weight time.

This does not solve the issue of hospital shortages, of course, but it does alleviate some of the burden placed on our already overworked healthcare system.

Poor Patient Outcomes

Naturally, the more restricted a hospital is when it comes to its resources, the less it will be able to provide high-quality care for its patients. 

Overworked people make mistakes. In healthcare, those mistakes can be deadly. 

Fewer Options

Fewer healthcare professionals also means fewer options for patients. This may not sound like a big deal. However, it’s important to keep in mind how much trust a patient needs to have in their healthcare provider to fully engage with the process. 

A person’s mindset can heavily influence their recovery process. If they are frustrated with their options, it may influence their ultimate results. 

Turnover creates turnover 

It’s also important to mention that turnovers statistically speaking, tends to cause more turnover.

Here’s what happens: one person leaves. The hospital might take two months to replace them. That doesn’t mean that they suddenly need one less person to run effectively. 

While the hospital searches for a replacement candidate all of the doctors and nurses are forced to work a little bit harder. The job becomes more stressful. They start to feel burnt out.

An obvious solution presents itself. Why not quit? It’s easy enough to find a nursing job at a different hospital. Or, statistically speaking, they won’t even do that. They’ll move onto a completely unrelated career path.

This may seem like an extreme reaction to a couple of stressful months at work, but it is a statistical fact that holds true across sectors of employment.

Remember that people are already stressed at work even when everything is going OK. This is particularly true in an industry like healthcare where day-to-day responsibilities are very serious, and the emotional wear and tear is significant.

Hasn’t everyone felt like they’ll blow a fuse if just one more bad thing happens? So many healthcare workers are already at the end of their rope. One setback might be all it takes to convince a stressed-out nurse that it’s time to look for a new job.

Naturally, patients feel the effect of this turnover more than anyone else. 

And as the hospital begins to lose employees, it can become very difficult to recruit new team members. After all, who wants to go to work for a hospital, that seems to be falling apart at the seams?

Generally speaking, most hospitals will usually be able to bring new people on eventually. However, it can take months or even years to recover from a significant staffing shortage.

Is there a solution? 

That’s the billion-dollar question. Right now hospitals all over the country are working hard to find ways to keep their staff around. This has included everything from improved hours to additional benefits to mental health resources and even raises. Fringe benefits may help keep some nurses around. However, to truly fix the issue of healthcare shortages a more systemic solution is necessary.

To create a sustainable supply of nurses, universities need to do a better job recruiting for their RN programs. This means not only finding a wider pool of candidates from high schools but also looking for future doctors and nurses from all walks of life.

It’s no secret that minority communities tend to experience worse medical outcomes than their majority group counterparts. More conscientious recruiting could help fix that problem.

This isn’t a solution that will be quick or easy. However, with concerted effort and enough time, there is hope that healthcare shortages will eventually be solved.