Nurses are leaving bedside nursing and the reasons are:
1.UnSafe work environment. COVID19 PANDEMIC is not the causative factor to nurses quitting their profession but it is the last Straw that breaks the Carmel”s back. COVID19 make nurses to re-evaluate the profession and the hazardous risk involved which nobody ever thought about. Even when they think about it they never take it serious.But COVID19 open up their eyes and they started questioning things.
2. Balancing of twelve hours shift with family and lifestyle. Twelve hours shift gives more days off but took away a lot from you as a nurse.You go to work early in the morning and you come back at night. It was designed to benefit employers.
3. Flexible work schedule : No matter how flexible the schedule is, it is not flexible enough for everyone. Someone has to bear the burden. We are often denied vacation or family leave request while some other nurses will get what they want at any given time. Nurses and all the other ancillary workers can thrive by fostering a safe and secure environment for all.
4.Caring ,compassion, trust and working together as a team. Nurses do not trust each other. Everything depend on the facility where you work.In a work environment that foster safety and collaboration, nurses can trust each.But as discrimination becomes the other of the day,some nurses want to work with nurses that look like them and speak the same language with them.And if you’re not of the same race they will do everything within their power to get you fired by backstabing and refusing to orient you.COVID19 open up people’s minds. Who want to be abused,backstab and lie against?.Nobody wants to be relegated to the background.
So some nurses decided to do Travel Nursing Assignments with 8 or 13 weeks contract. So they are not dealing with the politics within the nursing administration. This is actually one benefit of COVID19 PANDEMIC because it force people to see the good and the ugly.
5.Organizations value of their long-term employees. Recently most organizations do not care about their loyal employees. I was shocked when employees who have worked in the same hospital for so many years five,twenty years or more got fired for minor offenses. Assessment of how organizations treat their staff should be re-evaluated.
6.Some particular modification may be needed and highly recommended but is not feasible due to organizational constraints, time,money and personal. For example the hospital may want to staff the unit and floors well but don’t have enough staff to do the job. If hospital want to discourage nurses from leaving, they should have a decision making board to implement changes that allow nurses to thrive. A strategy that include steps by steps that will be taken must be well defined and established. The plan should be concrete with specific goals that include the deadlines that define the length of time in which the objectives should be achieved. It will include incentives that will keep nurses in the job and not burned out.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs- Wikipedia. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs touch so many basic assumptions about human needs. One of the assumptions is that basic needs must be atleast fairly satisfied before other higher levels of needs can become important to the individual. For example a deprived individual cannot care about saving for 401k or self esteem. An hungry man is a angry man.
Another assumption is the individual differences. Why Mr A needs five hours of sleep, Mr B might need nine hours of sleep to feel comfortable. So twelve hours shift for three to four days straight does not favor everyone. With COVID19 PANDEMIC, DELTA VARIANTS, and OMICRON nurses begin to evaluate their options. “Are mine doing this”?.Moreover so many of these nurses witnessed the death of their colleagues.
Food ,sleep and sex are considered basic human needs.But are bedside nurses getting it?.Most nurses do not consider it important to them but after surviving PANDEMIC they are now rethinking. It is therefore important for nurses needs to be met by nursing administration for nurses to provide adequate nursing care.
According to AACN FACT SHEET there are 3.8 million nurses nationwide about 84.3% are currently employed.And about 10% are planning to leave or retire by next year.Services provided by nurses are very important to humanity and the total welfare of the communities.
There is CODE OF ETHICS that guide the decision of professional nursing. Nurses are individually responsible for their actions and safe working environment, caring leadership and understanding will put a break in nurses leaving, and foster safety and collaboration among nurses.
Nurses You Move Me 