Concerns about staffing during COVID surges have dropped, but nurse leaders are becoming more worried about the ability to maintain standards of care, a new survey shows.
A longitudinal study conducted in August and published this month by the American Organization for Nursing Leadership focuses on new data and major shifts that have occurred in healthcare since the second of four similar surveys conducted in February 2021. The other longitudinal surveys, all conducted in conjunction with Joslin Insight, were in July 2020, August 2021, and August 2022.
“Since July 2020, access to PPE has fallen from a top challenge to barely measurable at less than 1% response rate,” the authors wrote. “Financial resource availability moved up three positions since August 2021 to the fourth leading challenge. While still a top five challenge, surge staffing dropped two places. Communicating and implementing changing policies has steadily improved. Notably, maintaining standards of care steadily worsened since July 2020.”
The emotional health and well-being of nurse leaders has improved slightly but remains the profession’s top concern, according to the survey.
The data from the October publication indicates that after emotional health and well-being the next concerns of nurse leaders are staff retention and the cost of travel nursing. There were 2,336 respondents; 73% were either vice presidents, chief nursing officers or chief nursing executives, directors or managers.
Three percent of the respondents came from long-term acute care or post-acute care facilities.
Interestingly, the top concern changed by role: In order, managers ranked emotional health, retention, traveling staff highest; directors said retention, emotional health, traveling staff; and CNO/CNEs said emotional health of staff, retention, traveling staff.
Some 13% of respondents said they had left a position in the previous half year, and the top three reasons for the change were better life-work balance; looking for new opportunity; burnout/exhaustion.
They said employers could improve satisfaction by addressing staffing shortages and increasing salaries. The top action employers have actually taken by far was increasing wages, bonuses, or compensation, at 68%.
“Data from this survey also indicates hope,” said the authors. “Considering emotional health, a downward trend occurred during the first three surveys, but an uptick emerged over the past year. Whether this trend is transitory is uncertain, but it is a positive sign that the worst might be over.”
