Once a month, Professor Walden sends an email to our subscribed NP community titled ‘From the Desk of Latrina Walden’ in which she gives her thoughts on current events. This month she focused on something you’ve definitely heard of or experienced recently - the extreme rise of staffing shortages and travel nurses within our organizations.
Here at LWES, there has been an ongoing discussion about burnout and how it’s affecting our industry specifically. And it’s not just a conversation amongst ourselves! Our reach is spreading to media outlets and other thought leaders in healthcare, like this conversation Latrina had with Northside Neighbor:
Nurses grapple with burnout, stress and depression as COVID-19 persists
So because we like making things easy for you, here are the main 3 takeaways from Professor Walden’s email:
- Contrary to what some believe, nurses would rather not travel. They HAVE to. They would rather stay at their home hospitals, near their families, near their support system and make relatively the same money. With the rising cost of inflation and student loan payments, this is becoming a necessity.
- This mass nursing exodus is not primarily about money. Do nurses want (and deserve) more money? Yes, absolutely. There are other solutions to addressing this problem that need to be prioritized like better staffing ratios, the ability to use PTO guilt-free, and systems that allow nurses to leave work at work so they can have better work-life balances.
- Capping travel pay is also not going to solve this problem. Utilizing tools that we were taught in school, like continuous quality improvement, to take a deep dive into current processes is a starting point. Nurses are people first, and we should be treated like it.
Again, this has been an ongoing conversation here at LWES to address burnout within our industry because quite frankly, we’re finding that most nurses do not want to leave the industry.
The ability to be seen and heard by administration is everything so in the spirit of our conception, we’re in the process of creating solutions to burnout as well. The emails we’ve been recently receiving have lit a fire under us to make the change we want to see.
We urge you to join us in this discussion by filling out the brief survey below. Your identity will remain anonymous, but your answers will help support this movement. If you have any questions or just want support at this time, please email us at info@latrinawaldenexamsolutions - you’re not alone.
