A Nurse Explains 4 Reasons Why Nurses Are Leaving Healthcare
I am a nurse, and this is from my personal observations.
I have been in the medical field since 2006. Working as a Certified Nursing Assistant or #CNA, Licensed Practical Nurse or #LPN, and Registered Nurse or #RN, I have worked in most of the roles in nursing.
Regardless of my experience, it did not prepare me for #COVID.
No matter your role or what form of healthcare you're in, for example, hospital, home health, management, etc. We were all affected by COVID, right?
The main #reasons I know nurses are leaving are because:
Low staffing
Patient safety concerns (because of the low staffing)
Burnout (because of low staffing and patient workload)
Pay!
After working on countless contracts, I know that #low #staffing and the high levels of #stress that accompany it is enough in themselves for nurses to want to leave. Can you blame them?
So this is what I know:
Every hospital I have worked in was due to #lowstaff. When nurses are low staffed that means they get a higher nurse to patient ratio. Let's say the normal nurse-to-patient ratio should be 1 nurse to 4 patients. When there is low staffing, that ratio may become 1 nurse to 6-8+ patients. The reason ratios are so important is because nurses are only capable of doing so many tasks for so many patients based on how sick they are. The sicker the patient, the fewer patients the nurse should have, make sense?
You can see how these ratios can become very #unsafe. Safety is our main #concern as nurses because that is how things that involve patient care begin to fall through the cracks. We are literally running around for 12 hours making it our priority to ensure our #patients are #safe and properly cared for. See how the stress may mount?
After having to endure this type of stressful work environment for extended periods when staff is continuously fluctuating, the #burnout starts to kick in. The #dread of going to work increases. This leads to increasing call-outs from shifts, which then worsens the already low staffing. More pressure is applied to who.. the staff nurses! Ever line up dominos and tip one over, then they all fall over one after the other? This is what I call a continuous domino effect of why nurses leave healthcare.
As a travel nurse, I have worked in many emergency departments working alongside the devoted staff nurses. It is my job to show up and hit the ground running. I am there to help with low staffing and take on the patient loads to alleviate the pressure on the staff nurses. So of course, we are on the #frontlines of the battlefield together. Because of this, I get to know the nurses very quickly and as quickly as I get to know them I learn about the problems of the department. I am the new face, the new ear, the new nurse to vent to because they feel strongly about me needing to know and I of course I am all ears.
So, when we travel nurses show up content to have a contract and are ready to help. While the staff nurses have been struggling to get out of what feels like quicksand, here we are. They know, they always know, that we are making a decent paycheck and I tell you they always want to know how much money I am making. I am a nurse that has left my family and the comfort of my home to work in another state. Yes, it must be worth it for us to come and help out with staffing. So #pay is at the front of their minds when we show up.
Why not leave their staff job to go make more money doing the same job as other #travelnurses? It is not difficult to understand why so many staff nurses have left the hospitals they've been at for years. I find it interesting that when you #quit a hospital job, then later return, the #increase in hourly #pay that you receive upon your return is actually more money than you would be making if you would have stayed in that position and received your raises over time. I learned this when my old staff job attempted to recruit me.
Do I believe that hospitals clearly know that staffing is an issue and although they try to bring new faces in with travel contracts and new staff here and there, they know they can do better by minimally increasing pay to retain and hire new staff? The answer is, I don’t know. I’ve never spoken to a CEO to know, nor have I ever been in an upper management position to know. What I DO know is that you can google the millions of dollars they make compared to the income staff nurses make while putting literally everything they have into saving lives and making a difference because they care. They don't want your pathetic pizza parties as a token of your appreciation, and when I say "your" I mean the hospital upper management.
The problem for us as nurses is that we actually #CARE. We care about our patients, we care about our co-workers who are practically family. We care too much and that makes us work harder. The emotional and physical exertion that builds then feels like a ton of bricks that we carry on our shoulders as we leave work, and then bring it home.
Is it worth it?
Do you still feel like you're making a difference?
Do you still love healthcare like you did when you first started?
When people say you have such a rewarding career, does it feel like it?
These are the questions we ask ourselves. The answers then decide if nurses will leave or stay. The work environment and pay ultimately have everything to do with decision-making.
I’ve had friends completely leave healthcare to become Real Estate agents! Most nurses are #leaving hospital #bedside positions and going back to school. I too am doing the same, but I started my back-to-school journey pre-COVID. I decided it was time for me to settle down in my home state with a career that I could have more control over and not have to work any more weekends and holidays. But of course, COVID happened, I took some time off from school to jump back in the frontlines, and never could I have ever imagined what that experience would do to me.
It taught me that no matter how much experience you think you may have had, no one was prepared for what COVID brought to our hospitals. The death, sadness and emotional burden we all carried was never in my career of being an ER nurse ever expected. It ultimately reminded me that going back to school was definitely the right thing to do because I knew in my heart that I was not going to be a bedside nurse forever.
Either you have it or you don’t. I know nurses who will work their whole lives at the bedside because they absolutely love it so much that they’ll never leave. While others like myself, can’t continue to dive headfirst into the quicksand. I consider quality of life to be me taking control of my work environment and my schedule (because who loves working major holidays?) to be with my loved ones without having hospital management telling me what they think is best for me. I left my staff job in 2016 because I learned long ago that being a staff nurse just wasn’t meant for me.
I hope this brought some value to you & the perspective of this nurse!
Comentarios