The staffing crisis of American health care workers continue Making headlines, senior nursing and paramedics suffer the worst staff deficits.MeterOver 100,00 registered nurses leave the workforce In 2021, the biggest exodus of a career in more than four decades.
According to a recent report, a workplace environment of excessive burnout and rapid turnover is causing recent graduates to enter the nursing profession in a state of anxiety. Report From the Nurse Staffing Platform incredibly healthyTwo main sources of this anxiety are concerns about an inadequate onboarding process and staffing shortages leading to overwork, said Iman Abuzeid, CEO of Incredible Health.
To conduct the study, Incredible Health analyzed data from recent nursing graduates and 400,000 nurses on its platform. Most of these recent graduates and new nurses are members of Gen Z.
Adequate training is one of the most important aspects of the job Gen Z nurses look for, the report found. According to Abuzeid, because Gen Z nurses are young and career-oriented, they expect their training to be not only comprehensive and disciplined, but also provide a clear path to eventually becoming a professional nurse.
“Many newly graduated nurses are eager to move quickly into specialty areas, such as emergency medicine programs,” she said. “As a result, training programs that emphasize specialized skills tend to be what they prefer, and the ability to get nurses into these areas early on is definitely their preference.”
The report showed that nearly 8 in 10 nurses entering the field found their training to be overwhelming, rushed or not as informative as they had hoped. Some Gen Z nurses also lament that they are not training experienced nurses, but fresh graduates.
Abuzeid noted that this anecdotal data is concerning, especially since 41 percent of new nurses report that orientation is the most important resource their employer can provide. One respondent said staffing shortages were the clear culprit in forcing hospitals to abandon resources they would normally recruit for new nurses, leaving her and her peers without “long enough formal orientation for new graduates.”
The report also found that two-thirds of new nursing graduates felt burnt out within the first six months of employment. Abuzeid noted that staffing shortages have led to excessive overtime for new nurses, which not only leads to stress and anxiety, but can also lead to lower quality of care.
“When you’re overworked as a nurse, you’re more likely to make mistakes and your patient mortality goes up,” she said. “It’s quite stressful, frankly. Nurses care about patient safety, and in understaffed units, that tends to decrease.”
Nursing is already a stressful, high-risk job, and the added stress of its workforce crisis is prompting many new nurses to reconsider their career options – 55% of new nursing graduates say they do not plan to continue until retirement engage in the industry.
To reverse this trend, Abuzeid believes employers must quickly adapt to the needs of Gen Z nurses. To do this, providers must first ensure they can provide comprehensive training led by experienced nurses. They must also invest heavily in vocational advanced training to be able to hire and retain more nurses, Abuzeid said.
Photo: Sheilaman, Getty Images
