Nursing Satisfaction: What Matters Most At Work Report Released
Ascom, a healthcare IT and clinical collaboration company, has released Nursing Satisfaction: What Matters Most At Work, a survey-based report which finds three things hospitals can do now to relieve the nursing shortage. The survey of more than 500 nurses in the U.S. was conducted in July. Ascom looked at a variety of dynamics affecting nurses today in light of the current nursing shortage and changes in the job itself.
Based on the survey findings, hospitals can do three things now:
1. Focus on increasing pay to make the job worth doing.
When it comes to taking a new job at a hospital higher pay ranks #1. They say they need more competitive pay to make the job worth doing. Nurses ranked their top detractor from the nursing profession as having to care for sicker patients, which reflects the new landscape exacerbated by COVID. Today the type of patients who were in the ICU a decade ago are now on general medical-surgical floors, which leaves hospital staff members treating sicker patients who need a higher level of care. Compounding this for hospitals are the industry-wide nursing staffing shortage and having fewer experienced nurses to manage critical-care patients who need skilled care.
2. Implement a technology strategy focusing on nursing satisfaction to attract top talent.
Technology plays a key role in their decision to take a job and helped them do the job too. Nearly 60 percent of nurses say that a hospital’s suite of technology tools is an important factor in deciding whether to take a job at a particular hospital, and 47% say that technology is significantly enhancing and supplementing their skills as a clinician ’a great deal’ or ‘a lot.’
3. Invest in the technology that gives nurses more time with patients and preventative care.
“As a respiratory therapist, I understand the pressures nurses are under each day in normal circumstances, but now that the job has intensified, clinical workflow solutions technology can’t wait,” said Kelly Feist, Managing Director, Ascom Americas. “Intelligent workflow technologies are now as essential as bandages and medications. The good news is we have these kinds of solutions today.”
Of the top things nurses say they want their technology solutions to do, they rank doing more by integrating more information from monitoring systems via nurse call as the top item.
Read Nursing Satisfaction: What Matters Most At Work report for more information about other factors hospitals should consider to better meet the needs of nurses today.