Addressing Nursing Shortages – Nurses We Need You More Than Ever

• Nursing shortages have been present long before COVID-19. Perhaps additional stress throughout the pandemic has exacerbated the situation. 
• If nursing shortages persist, a lot can be at stake, including the one’s own value to the healthcare industry. 
• Convincing nurses of their value, supporting and advocating for nurses might be just what is needed to put a stop to nursing shortages. 

The catastrophic effects of the pandemic are likely to linger for a decade. Social, racial, and economic unrest pepper the landscape. Homicides and drug overdoses continue to spike. Stress, anxiety, fear, sadness, and loneliness grow at unprecedented levels. Businesses across the country struggle with supply chain constraints.  

Millions of households supporting their families on marginal incomes face skyrocketing inflation. Across the planet, these challenges reverberate.  

Healthcare is not exempt from the current turbulence. Yet the problems within healthcare existed long before the first case of Covid-19.

Impact of Nursing Shortages

Nursing shortages have been cyclical for decades. Nursing shortages was and continues to be a major concern for the US healthcare system. 

 In the past, nursing schools have met the growing demand until the pandemic exacerbated the burdened framework. 

Mediocre compensation and asymmetrical risk; long hours, violence, hazardous exposure, and a growing staffing void place nurses at increased risk and have provided added fuel for the exodus.  

According to the U.S. News report, one fifth of healthcare workers have left, and those remaining are facing burn-out at unprecedented levels. One third of the current direct-care workforce has considered leaving the profession according to the latest McKinsey & Company research. If that one third adds to the current nursing shortage, consider that the downward spiral of healthcare. 

With the burn-out barometer pinned in the red, why stay in nursing? There are other options. You may find your reasons to stay in the scheduling, career flexibility, and personal rewards.  

You may understand that a well-functioning healthcare model is essential to combat the frailty of human life in which nurses are an essential lynch pin.  

But I’d ask you to take a step back and consider the macro-societal view. In doing so, you might realize something greater is at stake if you leave the profession. Something unmeasurable by the traditional metrics.  

Risk of Nursing Shortages

What is your value as a nurse? It’s greater than you think, and here is why. Throughout the pandemic, healthcare continues a progression towards remote care through telehealth technology.  

What’s at risk is something human. Faced with threats to our personal safety, we’ve done our best to protect ourselves, maintaining an adequate distance from our patients, our families, but are we putting something greater in jeopardy?  

Technology is a blessing and a curse. A tool to care and a tool to distance. Our response to the pandemic has forced healthcare systems to adopt technologies that distance patients and providers.  

We jeopardize human connection through the unforeseen confluence of events. But imagine your impact if you stay in the nursing profession.  

Nurses experience and take part in the human condition daily, and bear witness to the power of intimacy, joy, and tragedy.  

Our ability to communicate, to touch, wields incredible power. Despite the technology at our fingertips, human touch remains integral to our survival as a species. Nurses deliver that touch. 

No other profession innervates at the interpersonal level as a nurse. Consider psychologist Harry Harlow’s classic study on monkeys. Separated from their mothers, the young monkeys embraced a cloth-covered surrogate that offered no milk, as opposed to a metal wired surrogate with milk.  

Nurses, we are that cloth covered surrogate as we are progressing into a touch averse world. Aristotle understood that human touch is a most basic sense, binding the sensory and rational nature of our fellow humans. Driving our inquisitiveness and foundation of knowing.

At its core, human touch improves interpersonal communication, pain relief, physical and emotional healing, stress management, and circulation. 

Understanding Your Value

Most nurses can program an IV pump, hang an antibiotic, or chart an assessment. Being cared for differs from receiving care.

As a nurse, do you understand your value? We need you in the nursing profession to continue to deliver human touch and communication, and not discount the sense of comfort and confidence that a patient may receive through the simple interaction between strangers. We cannot achieve this without you.  

Early in my career as an emergency room nurse, I’d have balked at these abstract concepts. Driven more by the visceral existence of my chaotic surroundings. Yet, I have grown to understand my value.

The Bottom Line

When holding a patient’s hand, nurses aren’t just a fleshy proxy. It’s a reminder that human touch holds the emotion and power to connect everyone.  

Nurses, you are the fundamental tool that binds. And we need you more than ever. Society needs you more than ever. Help us put a stop to the nursing shortages.

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