Unpacking The Nursing Crisis
It’s National Nurses Week! As the most trusted profession for the last 20 years, nurses make up the highest percentage of the US healthcare workforce and serve as the primary providers of patient care.
But we’re facing a nursing crisis and looming shortage.
We know the critical role nurses play in our healthcare system. They are the backbone of patient care. A 2018 meta-analysis found that the higher the level of nurse staffing in a hospital, the fewer patient deaths there were.
A recent study showed that more than 70% of health care workers in the country have symptoms of anxiety and depression, 38% have symptoms of PTSD, and 15% have had recent thoughts of suicide or self-harm.
The pandemic exacerbated the looming nursing shortage across the country. And a recent McKinsey survey found that more than 30% of nurses are currently thinking of leaving direct patient care. Not only will this be an even bigger strain on the nurses who stay, but it also puts patients' lives at risk.
So what can be done to reverse this trend? To answer that question, in this episode I talk to one of the author’s of that report -- Gretchen Berlin.
Gretchen is a Senior Partner at McKinsey. A registered nurse by background, Gretchen leads projects with leading public and private healthcare organizations to develop innovative healthcare strategies and drive sustainable change through frontline-workforce and clinical transformations.
Topics covered
How the supply/demand imbalance has led to nursing shortages across the country
The travel nursing conundrum, and if we should set pricing caps for nurse staffing agencies
How hospitals charge patients for nursing care
How has the profession been shaped by the fact that it’s majority female
How the industry has responded to the nurse who was recently criminally prosecuted for an accidental drug mixup
What’s needed to turn things around
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