Opinion | Want to Solve the Nurse Shortage?

We are registered nurses, and we work to place nurses in hospitals where they’re needed every single day. These tough, selfless healthcare professionals deal with exceptional challenges to provide the best care possible for patients. They love the line of work they’ve chosen, just as we once did — but many admit they don’t know how much longer they can do it.

The COVID-19 public health emergency may be over, but its effects are still wreaking havoc on hospitals. Nurses are struggling and quitting in droves. There’s now a devastating shortage of qualified people who can care for patients in our hospitals. Currently, experts estimate there are approximately 150,000 fewer nurses in the workforce than are needed, and only one-third of working nurses say they want to stay in the field long-term.

Thankfully, there are solutions — as long as hospitals and policymakers are willing to create healthier workplaces for our nurses and truly support their mental health by ensuring safe staffing ratios.

One of the primary reasons nurses are quitting is burnout from increased patient loads. Burnout, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is defined as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” Nurses often face unsustainable demands at work, and without proper support from their employers, they may end up exhausted, hopeless about their ability to make a difference for patients, and unable to provide the quality of care they know they could otherwise.

This is a self-perpetuating cycle. More patients at understaffed hospitals means less time for nurses to have necessary breaks, or even process the trauma they see on a daily basis. Unsustainable levels of responsibility without an increase in compensation, coupled with increasingly unsafe patient-to-staff ratios, are driving nursing talent out. Many of the remaining nurses in the workforce are left with growing patient loads, and often feel like they cannot share their struggles at work, so they eventually end up simply quitting. We have seen far too many nurses we work with quit within a year of graduating from nursing school because the reality of working in a hospital is now so different from what they were taught in school.

The more nurses we lose, the less patients will be able to get quality care when they are ill or injured. Wait times for medical procedures, hospital beds, and even emergency room admissions will rise even more. It’s not hyperbolic to say that people will needlessly suffer and die if we don’t do something to create healthier workplaces for nurses and keep more of them in the workforce.

This is where hospitals, policymakers, and individuals can help.

Hospitals can make it easier for nurses by normalizing conversations about mental health, and requiring supervisors and hospital leadership to regularly engage in these discussions. They can direct nurses to free mental health resources. Finally, they can develop policies that prioritize staff well-being, such as staffing patterns that allow for mandatory breaks and adequate sick and parental leave, and enforce limits on shift lengths.

Our U.S. Senators, meanwhile, can pass SB 1567, the Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act. SB 1567 would protect nurses, drive better patient care, and lower healthcare costs by setting minimum nurse-to-patient staffing requirements, require studies of best practices for nurse staffing, and provide whistleblower protections to nurses who advocate for the safety of their patients. We encourage anyone reading this to contact our senators and encourage them to pass SB 1567!

May is Nurse Appreciation Month, a time to uplift nurses and all they do. That includes calling for real change where it’s needed. All of us who work with nursing agencies are here to support our policymakers and hospitals as they work to create healthier workplaces for our nurses.

John Heymach, RN, and Caleb Skyles, RN, are registered nurses in the Kansas City area. Heymach is the co-founder and chief clinical officer of Kansas City-based Next Move Healthcare, and Skyles is the director of nurse recruiting at Next Move Healthcare.