Nursing Shortage: A Case Study

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Over the last several years, healthcare organizations across the United States have experienced a nursing shortage and experts predict that shortage to continue and increase in the upcoming years. In December of 2013 the Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that the demand will grow by 19% for new nursing positions by 2022 (Rosseter, 2014). On top of the demand for additional nursing jobs there will be over 525,000 nurses retire which will only add to the shortage. This can be attributed to the aging baby boomer population and The Affordable Care Act among other factors contributing to this nursing shortage crisis. (Rosseter, 2014) While the rate of demand is increasing the supply of nurses is not able to keep up with those demands. A …show more content…
We lose valuable nurses that we have invested both time and money recruiting and orienting. This significantly impacts job satisfaction, patient safety and overall morale of the nurses. I worked on a project in 2014 with Human Resources Director Chris Bos and with a team of front line nurses trying to solve this exact issue. At that time our vacancy rate was 10.4% and our turnover rate was 12.7%. The project was to identify the top barriers that attributed to nursing shortage, retention, and turnover. The team identified multiple reasons but seven of these items they felt contributed to our staffing issues. Mercy had just hired a new Chief Nursing Officer and she felt it was her responsibility to take on these issues along with the Nursing Shared Governance, so the project was turned over to nursing. They implemented the Daisy award for nurses, Nursing Residency program for all new hires, standardized educational reimbursement across all departments, and a nursing float pool, all of which were recommendations from front line nursing. Three years later as I review those same statistics Mercy’s rolling twelve month average nursing turnover rate is 16.7% and the vacancy rate is running around 7.6% (Stark, 2016). While the items that have been implemented have been successful, they did not solve our nurse staffing issues. This continues to be a key strategic initiative at Mercy because nurse staffing impacts patient …show more content…
Culture drives turnover as we have seen at Mercy. Another driver of turnover and culture is compensation. There is a big push to increase federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $15.00 per hour. That could have a significant impact to all businesses big and small. As you look to make changes you can usually use historical data to predict the impact of the proposed change. Unfortunatetly, there has not been a change this significant in the past to help determine the outcomes. The increase for some states will be very minor because their state minimum wage is already well above the federal minumum. There are only about nine cities and states that have minimum wages close to $15.00 per hour. This leaves many states and employers with a larger gap. (Picchi, 2015) Another issue is the impact on businesses bottom line. Raising minimum wage will raise the salaries which typically is already one of the largest expenses on most income statements. This could force small businesses to close their doors and drive more jobs to cheaper work forces around the
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