Two years into the pandemic and in the midst of the latest hospital staffing crisis, nurses have finally gotten the country’s attention when it comes to burnout and attrition within the country’s most trusted profession. It’s an important shift, because nursing is in trouble.
This week on the “First Opinion Podcast,” nurse and researcher Jane Muir describes some of the issues that are nudging more and more nurses to trade staff positions for jobs as travel nurses, or to leave nursing entirely, and offers ways to retain staff nurses. She says hospital systems need to put cash toward the nurses who make those systems so profitable, and tie the health and well-being of their nursing staffs’ often-invisible work (at least to administrators) to hospitals’ balance sheets, along with their accreditation status and government reimbursement rates.
“Stop shoving resiliency down our throats,” Muir said. “That link between burnout and the breakdown of team-care has negative implications for patient care.”
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The conversation stems from Muir’s First Opinion essay titled, “The solution to the wave of nurse resignations? Cold, hard cash”
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