Understanding & Remedying the Hospital Staffing Shortage

Discover how you can combat burnout and boost retention.

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[00:00:07.54] Staffing was an issue last year, year before. I don’t see that the concern is trending down at this point in time. There is a high use of travelers. There is a significant amount of dissatisfaction among staff that are within the organization currently. And there’s a significant amount of difficulty with recruiting new staff. Those are what I’m seeing as challenges.

[00:00:32.17] So to overcome these barriers, we’re trying to work very closely with the staff in the organization to identify what’s causing their dissatisfaction. And there’s multiple things. In the operating room, it’s not patient load what we’re seeing on the floor, is because we know every patient deserves a perioperative nurse. However, the hours that they’re working, they may be asked to stay. They may be asked to flex if there’s not cases that are scheduled for the day.

[00:01:03.22] And their environment. They may not have the products that they need. They may not have physicians that are cooperating. They may not have their patients fully prepared. So those are all significant dissatisfiers for the perioperative nurse that we’re trying to overcome some of the barriers to make it a better environment to work in, so that the nurses will choose to stay within the organization as opposed to leaving to become a traveler.

[00:01:31.37] Each one of the departments that we evaluate does have challenges. And that’s what we try to work on– to make it a better environment so this is the employer of choice where the staff will choose to stay with that hospital and not leave to become a traveler. And it’s also to recruit new staff. When we have staff satisfaction, we know that we’re going to be able to increase staff retention and also bring on additional staff.

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