Page 24 - BusinessWest June 12, 2023

“Nurses throughout
the country, including here at Baystate Health, continue to deal with the effects of a nationwide nursing shortage and the emotional impact that the COVID pandemic has had on nurses.”
here at Baystate Health, continue to deal with the effects of a nationwide nursing shortage and the emotional impact that the COVID pandemic has had on nurses,” said Joanne Miller, chief Nursing executive for Baystate Health and chief Nursing officer at Baystate Medical Center. “I am proud to say that, since the beginning of the pandemic, every nurse at Baystate Health has fulfilled our promise of advancing care and enhancing lives.”
Today’s nearly 4.4 million registered nurses in the U.S. constitute the nation’s largest healthcare profession, and the field offers a wide range of opportunities to those con- sidering a career, including practicing as clinicians, admin- istrators, researchers, educators, and policymakers.
In 2022, Baystate Health welcomed more than 900 nursing students into clinical placements from nursing pro- grams at American International College, Bay Path Univer- sity, Elms College, Holyoke Community College, Greenfield Community College, Springfield Technical Community Col- lege, UMass Amherst, and Westfield State University.
Newly graduated registered nurses (with less than 12 months of clinical nursing experience) can apply to its 10-month paid nurse residency program. During that time, they work directly with a unit preceptor and nurse educa- tor for clinical instruction combined with classroom-style seminars and skills/simulation sessions. The collaborative learning approach is designed to provide the knowledge base and skillset needed to successfully transition into the role of a professional nurse.
Reske said professional experiences like these dem- onstrate the need for collaborative practice. “They’re not alone but working with other teams, providing patient
care where everyone is thinking about how to improve the patient’s health and experience, looking at that patient’s val- ues and experiences.
“We’re preparing students to understand the complex realities of healthcare today,” she went on. “Nurses can really make a unique difference by looking at patients through the nursing lens with a more holistic view.”
Satisfaction Suffers
While all this is meaningful work, many nurses feel there’s a long way to go to reach ideal job satisfaction. According to the annual “State of Nursing in Massachu- setts” survey conducted by the Massachusetts Nurses Assoc. (MNA), bedside nurses feel undermined in their abil- ity to provide quality care by understaffing and assigning unsafe numbers of patients, which fuels the flight of nurses away from the profession and leads to hospitals relying on expensive travel nurses to fill the void. Among the survey data:
• 85% of nurses say hospital care quality has deteriorat- ed over the past two years;
• 53% say hospitals that rely on travel nurses have worse care;
• 71% of nurses say their biggest obstacle to deliver- ing quality care is understaffing and/or having too many patients at one time; and
• 88% of nurses support legislation limiting the number of patients assigned to a nurse at one time.
That last statistic rises to 98% when only new nurses are surveyed, demonstrating that nurses are entering the field with eyes wide open to to the impact of staffing challenges.
Rather than causing the staffing crisis, said Katie Mur- phy, a practicing ICU nurse and president of the MNA, “the COVID-19 pandemic has simply laid bare a system already broken by hospital executives. The industry claims it cannot find nurses, but the data shows there are more nurses than ever. There is not a shortage of nurses, but rather a shortage of nurses willing to work in these unsafe conditions.”
This year’s survey featured an all-time high number of nurses saying hospital care quality has gotten worse over the past two years. The survey has tracked this number since 2014, when it was 38%. In 2023, 85% of nurses saw care quality decline, up two points from last year, 30 points
The end of life deserves as much care and attention as the beginning.
That’s why we love hospice nurses.
At Hospice of the Fisher Home,
we honor our nurses today and every day for the comfort, dignity and compassion they bring to those in their care and to their loved ones.
Hospice
of the Fisher Home
1165 North Pleasant St., Amherst, MA 01002 fisherhome.org 413-549-0115
Care & Compassion. In Your Home or Ours. We are the only independent, nonprofit hospice in Western Massachusetts.
24 JUNE 12, 2023
MONTHLYFEATURE
BusinessWest