Washington State healthcare workers call on hospitals to mitigate the staffing crisis
There are a number of policies hospital administrators could immediately enact that would help alleviate some of the issues, the union says.
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Nurses and other front-line healthcare workers have gone on strike in droves during an ongoing staffing crisis, and this is especially apparent in the Evergreen State, as the Washington State Nurses Association has laid out several recommended actions for hospitals to improve working conditions.
The measures are necessary, the nurses union said, because ongoing staffing shortages are contributing to clinician burnout and a degradation of conditions for both workers and patients.
There are a number of policies hospital administrators could immediately enact that would help begin to alleviate some of those issues, the union said. They could, for instance, end mandatory overtime policies and ensure workers can safely take rest breaks to return to compliance with already-existing state law.
WSNA also suggested retention bonuses for frontline workers who have stayed on the job, which the group said would help offset hospitals' apparent need for massive signing bonuses for new staff and incentive pay for burned-out workers who take on additional shifts.
There should also be incentive pay and appropriate orientation for workers who take on extra work or shifts in a department they don't work in, the group said.
Lastly, WSNA suggested hospital administrators post enough positions in all job categories to achieve safe staffing levels, and actively work to fill all open positions.
WHAT'S THE IMPACT?
According to the Nurses Association, the staffing shortage was prevalent in Washington even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The coronavirus exacerbated this already strained infrastructure, and the group maintains that hospitals' response to the pandemic – including slowly filling open positions, falling back on mandatory overtime, and spending resources on signing bonuses and traveling positions rather than existing staff retention – has only worsened this preexisting shortage and led to massive burnout among workers.
"We've heard near-unanimous agreement around the problem," said Julia Barcott, a critical care nurse in Toppenish and WSNA union leader. "That's great. But only one voice in this conversation has the ability to immediately begin fixing this problem, and that's [that of] the hospitals. It's past time we saw meaningful action and policy changes from them, for the sake of our frontline workers and for patients and families across the state."
THE LARGER TREND
The problem is national in scope. In September, the American Nurses Association sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services asking the agency to declare the ongoing nursing shortage a national crisis, citing overwhelmed health systems and burnt out staff.
Specifically, the ANA cited the Delta variant of COVID-19 as a complicating factor that has exacerbated the underlying challenges of a chronic shortage in the nursing-workforce.
While the initial focus at the start of the pandemic was on equipment shortages and a dearth of ventilators and personal protective equipment, the ANA said the focus must now shift to the human-resource shortage, which the group cited as "more dire" and potentially threatening to patient care.
Data published in June by the Association of American Medical Colleges shows the U.S. could see an estimated shortage of between 37,800 and 124,000 physicians by 2034, including shortfalls in both primary and specialty care.
ON THE RECORD
"Large signing bonuses, filling positions with traveling staff, asking the federal government for emergency staff capacity – all of these are stopgap measures," said Faye Guenther, president of UFCW 21. "You won't reduce the need for these expensive, short-term fixes until you address the underlying problems causing burned-out healthcare workers to leave the bedside.
"In the long run, the only way we're going to see this crisis start to get better for workers and patients is for hospitals to step up and apply even a portion of that energy and those resources towards making the day-to-day working conditions of their nurses and other staff manageable."
Twitter: @JELagasse
Email the writer: jeff.lagasse@himssmedia.com
