Although nursing home employment has slowly been on the rise since the pandemic sent staffing numbers plummeting nationwide, the toll the nursing shortage specifically has taken continues to be a concern for operators.
Persistent staffing shortages and high turnover has more broadly motivated operators to rethink positions like MDS coordinator roles and consider allowing registered nurses and certified nursing assistants (CNAs) more flexibility, among other innovations.
Yet to fully address the nursing shortage, more changes may be underway.
The most common reason why nurses plan to leave the field are the ongoing shortages, followed by the need for a better work/life balance and feeling their mental health is at risk because of burnout and a lack of appreciation.
Roughly 50% of the nurses surveyed have considered leaving the professions.
That’s according to a recent survey conducted by OnePoll and ConnectRN, a mobile software platform that assists frontline staff in finding available employment slots at multiple facilities.
The survey included responses from more than 1,000 nurses.
ConnectRN CEO Ted Jeanloz told Skilled Nursing News that many nurses who were working double shifts in Covid units, while their peers worked from home, often felt like they were in an unfair situation and it led many in the workforce to rethink their future careers.
“When they have a hard day, they know that they have alternatives, right, and just knowing that they have alternatives – like working in different facilities, or just walking away from the job for a couple of days and still coming back,” he said. “I think that emotionally helps them a lot.”
Jeanloz said the senior care industry underestimates the importance of technology in retaining the nursing workforce.
“If they want to work five shifts, they can work five shifts,” he said of the platform. “If they want to work one shift a month, they can work one shift a month and we give them a choice of shifts, time, location, etc. And we think that we’ve been able to pull nurses and CNAs off the bench and back into caregiving, back to the bedside by offering them this flexibility.”
Flexibility may be a growing trend in the industry. Nurses surveyed said they need an average of four vacation days per month to feel fully recharged at work, and if they could create their dream work schedule, 65% of nurses said they would like to have a four-day weekend, 46% said they wanted time to eat a full lunch, 39% said they wanted to have a more flexible shift and 28% said they wanted to have more breaks.
Overall, nurses said they wanted to have better communication with upper management, opportunities to negotiate salaries, better equipment/medical gear and chances of promotion.
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