Oct 19, 2021
Nurses are the lifeblood of the healthcare system. Elbow-deep in patient care, they keep healthcare moving day to day, hour to hour, and minute by minute. Keeping them healthy, safe, and satisfied in their careers is crucial for patient outcomes and bottom lines. Here are five things all healthcare businesses can do to help their nurses thrive.
#1 Better Pay and Benefits
Survey the world over, and better pay is likely the top request for many professions. But after nearly two years of holding the front lines of a global pandemic, nurses should be first in line for salary renegotiations. Whether hospitals and healthcare organizations can afford it is hard to say, but reallocating funding to nurse salaries, benefits, and perks is a big asset when competing for top nursing talent.
#2 Less Administration in the Workplace
Most nurses didn’t sign up to do paperwork, nor did they anticipate the degree to which workplace politics would impact their careers. According to Medscape, both RNs and LPNs ranked administration and workplace politics as the least satisfying aspect of their jobs in 2020. Considering the global pandemic, this is incredible and could serve as an oddly refreshing wake-up call to the industry: Nurses like nursing even at its most difficult (and traumatic), but they really don’t like all the parts of their job that aren’t nursing.
#3 Telehealth Opportunities
Working remotely has its advantages, and nurses want them too. Telehealth offers the ability to work from home with a flexible schedule, while still seeing patients and achieving career growth. It’s very appealing to many nurses with families or others simply seeking a change from traditional clinical settings. Healthcare organizations are likely to see a shift in nurses requesting telehealth opportunities and risk losing nursing staff to competitor organizations with those roles.
#4 Less Work Stress
It’s hard to fathom the amount of stress and turmoil healthcare providers have faced since March 2020. They need (and absolutely deserve) a break. The trick is making sure they can find stress reduction while still caring for people. Here’s where hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare organizations may have to get a little creative. How can they provide and encourage stress reduction in the workplace? From self-care to break times to vacations, healthcare administrators need to find ways to support stress management practices at work.
#5 More Working Nurses
When the topic of the nurse shortage comes up, it’s usually in the context of organizations trying to find enough staff to operate safely, effectively, and efficiently. It’s understood that this is difficult for hospitals and the larger healthcare system, but what about for the nurses on the ground? Day after day, they are short-staffed and spread thin over-doing their duties. They want relief in the form of more nursing colleagues as soon as possible. Everyone benefits from more nurses working in the world, and it’s a critical time to work together to ensure more nurses have opportunities and are satisfied in their careers.