Out of 250 nurses, nearly half say they may consider leaving nursing in the next two years, according to ShiftMed’s annual state of nursing report released on Tuesday.
According to the report, 20% of the 200 RNs, 25 LPNs and 25 CNAs surveyed say they are very likely to leave the profession.
Offering flexible scheduling is one way ShiftMed CEO Todd Walrath, thinks operators could help lessen the staffing shortage seen across the industry.
Though he admits it will take more than one strategy to keep the staffing shortage from getting any worse than it is right now.
“I know that before COVID, there were 500,000 openings for nurses and the Bureau of Labor and Statistics just came out last week with a stat that says that number is now up to 1.8 million,” he explained. “So in 18 months we’re looking at an increase of 3X in terms of shortage.”
He sees the need for nurses in long-term care only growing from here.
“The scary thing is that we’re still in the first inning,” he said. “We’re 11 years into a 20-year cycle for boomers retiring so 10,000 people a day turning 65 starting in 2010, every day for 20 years.”
The nurses surveyed indicated that higher pay, better nursing ratios, better shifts and fewer working hours would convince them to stay in the field, with nearly one third indicating they wanted more flexibility with their schedules.
Roughly 52% of respondents said that they have had to work more hours and longer shifts due to the nursing shortage and 45% say they are given larger patient loads than is feasible for their position.
Nearly half said they believe being forced to work too many hours is the biggest cause of nurses leaving the field today.
A recent National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care survey of 70 small, medium and large operators in the skilled nursing and long-term care space have indicated that all were currently paying staff overtime hours.
The ShiftMed platform, one of the largest workforce management platforms in health care, has grown in recent months, and now has 60,000 nurses signed up with 1,000 more added per month, according to Walrath.
“There’s many different things that we can do to make [the staffing shortage] 15 to 20 to 30% better, but it probably needs to be 300% better,” Walrath admitted. “What we counsel on now and have them focus on is if there aren’t enough nurses to cover all the shifts, how to make sure that you’re maximizing the nurses that want to work in your facilities.”
Giving workers more choice is one reason that ShiftMed is seeing the use of its services rise among nurses.
“If the worker wants to audition several facilities before they pick the one they want, if they want to work three doubles and take four days a week off, they can do that and they probably couldn’t get that same flexibility within the building they’re in,” he explained. “They have their own ideas of when they want to work. They can optimize their comp, they decide what time they work and if they want to work in a building closer to where they live. They have the ability to make all those choices now.”
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