Keeping Nurses Happy And Battling Turnover

A happy nurse is an efficient nurse. Really, that statement can be said for any profession out there. But nurses, perhaps more than any other industry, have to deal with one of those most dynamic and stressful environments. Those types of environments can sometimes lead to “nurse burnout”. But there’s a way to avoid nurse turnover and keep them happy! It’s all about improving quality of life on the job.

 

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Staying Focused

Research shows that if a nurse can stay focused on their work and not staffing concerns, then patient overall care increases. It’s plain and simple, adding a Registered Nurse’s hours to patient care drastically improves the outlook for that patient.  The average RN turnover rate is 15% and that rate is set to increase over 2016 at 42%. In addition, a shortage of RNs is expected to reach at least 20% over the next 10 years! This is due to the fact that many Baby Boomers are retiring, while others are simply just leaving the industry.

When it comes to work life balance, a higher percentage of RNs say that a higher workload is the biggest reason that prevents them from having a satisfying work/life balance. When a nurse has to juggle several patients, it becomes difficult for them to provide outstanding care.

 

Satisfaction Guaranteed

When nurses are allowed to have the time to build meaningful nurse-patient relationships and provide genuine care for people, then their satisfaction is proven to increase, resulting in many nurses staying on board for the long term.  Morale is important in any occupation, but when it comes to patient care, it’s perhaps now more integral than ever. The last thing a nurse wants to deal with when heading into their shift is the unknown. Staffing issues can lead to several problems if a facility is not staffed correctly. However, if staffing is a problem, new scheduling software and or schedules will not necessarily solve the problem. The problem can almost always be traced back to patient flow. Providing and securing an effective means of bring new patients into a hospital, facility or clinic has a trickle down effect and will almost always lead to a better quality of life on the job for nurses and eventually solve staffing issues.

 

The Changing Landscape

One thing we know about nurses for sure, is that you can never have too many of them. That’s why entering the nursing field can be such a promising career. A new study reinforces this fact, citing that hospitals with more nurses have significantly lower mortality rates than hospitals where nurses are spread too thin.

The British Medical Journal says the same also  goes for doctors. More doctors to cover more patients found that there would also be a low chance of death. The study examined 137 acute care “trusts,” which are organizations that oversee hospitals in the U.K. Specifically, facilities with ratios of one nurse per six patients or lower had 20 percent lower patient mortality rates than those with 10 or more nurses per patient.

In contrast, the study found that higher numbers of other health care support workers, who have less training than nurses, was associated with higher mortality rates. That, said the researchers, was evidence that hospitals seeking to cut costs by hiring less experienced substitutes for nurses are doing a disservice to patients.

 

The 2016 Nursing Industry Forecast

There is a lot of data to consider when trying to forecast the future of a particular sector of the healthcare sector.

Ardor Health Solutions recently compiled a brand new forecasting report for The Nursing Industry in 2016. The report crunches the numbers and looks deep into which way the nursing industry is trending.

Want to know more? Click below to view the report!

 

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