Nursing is among the most respected and popular healthcare professions, with just under 4.7 million registered nurses practicing in the US and 750,000 in the UK. We have only to look at the herculean efforts that nurses made during the pandemic to understand the reverence. This makes it especially disheartening that these pillars of patient care are leaving their profession in droves, causing a national crisis in the US and the UK. Today, the US has a shortage of more than 78,000 nurses and the UK has a shortage of 43,000 nurses, which leaves existing nurses to pick up the slack.
The primary culprits for the shortage are job dissatisfaction and overwhelming burnout. Nurses have experienced a 60% increase in their workload and 38% have cited increasing violence in their healthcare setting. While COVID-19 exacerbated the situation, the shortage and burnout were already a growing issue long before the pandemic.
Recent research shows that while 60% of nurses say they love their profession, 69% are considering leaving their positions within five years, and 42% are contemplating exiting the profession altogether. More than nine in ten believe the shortage will only worsen.
This comes at a time when our population is getting older. For the first time in US history, adults aged 65 and older are expected to outnumber individuals under 18 by 2034 – just ten years. By 2041, it is expected that there will be over 3 million people aged 85 or over – more than double the number that there are today. Older adults typically have multiple comorbidities that are more complex to treat and require additional care and healthcare resources. If the nursing shortage isn’t addressed soon, the results could be devastating for our senior population.
Nearly eight in ten nurses say their units are inadequately staffed. For every patient a nurse has over their average workload, the chances of 30-day mortality increase by 16%. Research shows that with optimal nurse-to-patient ratios, “thousands of deaths could be avoided, and patients would experience shorter lengths of stay, resulting in cost-savings for hospitals.”
Getting nurses back to the bedside
During a recent national webinar, we shared expert feedback on this topic. “The traditional healthcare organization was designed around departmental requirements, not the needs of the patient”, shared former Chief Nursing Officer and Clinical Process Consultant, Inge Garrison. Traditional communication and scheduling pathways prioritize operational processes, inhibiting real-time decision making and nurse empowerment. She continued, “Nurses know what actions must be taken to maintain the flow of care but face barriers at every turn as they try to keep patients moving throughout the system.”
For example, studies have found that nurses spend 10% of their shifts searching for equipment, information, or supplies. In another study, nurses say they experience “16-30% preventable wasted time during the shift,” with the most contributing factors being waiting for “lab data responses, transfer of patients, or delivery of care.”
A recent study to further break down how nurses spend their time. Transforming Care at the Bedside (TCAB), which was an evaluation of how nurses spend their time in reference to patient-centered care, found that out of a 12-hour shift, just seven hours were spent on direct patient care. The goal of the TCAB study was to identify ways to engage nurses and enable them to remodel their own work processes and care activities in a way that would allow them to get back to the bedside.
The study identified four primary areas that need to be addressed to empower nurses. The first was safety and reliability, or being able to provide safe, reliable, effective, and equitable patient care. The second was care team vitality, or whether nurses had a supportive, nurturing environment that supported professional development. The third was a patient-centered focus that emphasized patient/family values and choices and care continuity. The final area was increased value that reduced waste and promoted continuous care flow.
Creating a strategy around these four key elements is a proven way to improve care delivery, reduce nurse attrition, and enhance quality metrics.
Embracing digital innovation
An additional way to empower nurses and enable them to spend more time with patients is through technology. A study by McKinsey & Company found that “in a typical shift, approximately 20 percent net time reduction can be achieved through tech enablement.” Time savings include documentation, hunting and gathering, medication administration, nursing handoff, and interdisciplinary communication.
A great example of digital innovation is Navenio’s Integrated Workforce Solution (IWS). Designed based on award-winning University of Oxford science, the IWS solution is a robust, scalable indoor location solution that works where GPS does not, enabled using smartphone sensors. The app provides real-time actionable insights that allow prompt task allocation by getting the right person to the right place at the right time. This includes functions such as portering, cleaning, assets, transportation, and clinical.
With IWS, nurses have easier, faster access to information such as lab results while spending less time waiting on porters or cleaning to transport patients and prepare beds. In addition, it reduces the need for nurses to take care of tasks that could or should be delegated to non-clinical staff. This enables them to spend more time doing what they were trained to do: care for patients.
Hospitals using IWS have reported an increase of 175 additional hours per week for direct patient care, a 29% reduction in wait times, 40% faster response times, a 29% increased capacity, and an overall improvement in patient safety. By providing real-time location information, healthcare workers in hospitals have been able to increase the number of tasks completed by 94% and reduce bed turnaround time by 35%.
Navenio’s IWS solution integrates with the hospital’s electronic health records and smart-room systems to provide actionable data insights and real-time decision making.
A new strategy for a new reality
“The healthcare industry has changed dramatically, with nurses bearing the brunt of that change. To adapt to our “new normal,” organizations must adopt strategies for our current clinical reality”, said Garrison during a recent interview. And that means getting nurses back to the bedside where they can work at the top of their license. Technology such as Navenio’s IWS can help. With no need for additional capital infrastructure, IWS can deliver better patient flow, faster bed changing, more effective asset tracking, and more timely discharges. This, in turn, reduces patient wait times and ER backlogs while improving patient care and nurse satisfaction.
Connie Moser is a serial entrepreneur with several successful exits to her credit and more than 30 years of experience building healthcare information technology organizations. Connie is known industry wide as a true leader who relentlessly pursues growth through realized customer value, all while building loyal teams that routinely follow her to new opportunities.
Connie’s success is data-driven, accomplished through validated growth metrics gained via strategic acquisitions, effective sales bundles, and business process streamlining through automation. As the Chief Executive of Navenio, a UK based technology company focused on logistical intelligence in healthcare, she is validating her leadership skill with successful revenue transactions as she did as the CEO of Verge Health (now RLDatix) and building a strong presence in the US and global healthcare market. Team empowerment and mentoring younger employees has been a constant throughout her lengthy career and a source of deep satisfaction. Her mentorship extends to her work as a long-time board member of her alma mater Ripon College since 2013.
Outside of her professional life, Connie has also held a board position with the Competency and Credentialing Institute for non-profit organizations focused on nursing certification. She is a frequent speaker and industry expert often called upon to provide feedback by the venture and private equity community around new analytically enabled solutions and companies.
