In: Nursing
Read the assessment background below and answer the questions
that follow
Assessment Background:
You are the nurse manager at a skilled nursing facility. There has been tremendous nurse burnout and turnover at your facility. Next Tuesday, the CEO and CFO of your organization are coming to assess the situation. You must explain to these stakeholders the current trends for nursing leadership related to nursing recruitment, retention, and engagement in the workplace. The goal of your presentation is to help influence your stakeholders to increase funding and make allowances for you to create positive change for a healthier workplace.
Questions:
1. Provide a basic analysis of reasons for nurse burnout and high turnover rate.
2. Thoroughly and insightfully evaluate the best methods for the
nurse manager to increase recruitment.
3. Thoroughly and insightfully evaluate the best methods for the
nurse manager to increase retention.
4. Described the relationship between staffing, productivity, and quality leadership for employee engagement.
(1) Burnout is a common psychological phenomenon among nurses. It is characterized by a decline in physical, emotional, and psychological energy resulting from work-related stress33-35 that leads to cynicism toward clients and colleagues and feelings of low self-efficacy.36 Burnout may arise because of work overload; a lack of resources, control, and justice; value conflicts; and the absence of a sense of community.34 Burnout includes 3 key aspects:
Emotional Exhaustion (EE): the state of being physically and emotionally exhausted by work stress, which is characterized by low energy, fatigue, depression, hopelessness, and helplessness.33-35
Depersonalization (DP): the interpersonal aspect of
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, it was no secret that the healthcare industry faced enormous nursing shortages, a challenge healthcare organizations and staffing companies have been struggling to solve. The coronavirus crisis put a new focus on the acute need for qualified nurses, and in some cases, the need has been so great, nurses have come out of retirement to fill the gaps.
Generally speaking, some of the factors that affect supply and demand of nursing candidates have included:
Encourage team work for better results. Don’t allow your employees to work in isolation all the time. You must teach your employees the importance of inspiring each other even in your absence.
2 )Asa nurse rAsa nurse recruiterecruiter, you may be woering how you can bridge this gap. The following are eight nursing recruitment strategies that can help you fill those nursing positions now and when demand for nurses returns to previous levels.
Acknowledge thAcknowledge that competition is at competition is fierce
When supply is low and demand high, nurse recruiters become more aggressive. And with the number of nursing jobs expected to increase at a rate of 12% (the national average for all occupations is only 5%), competition is likely to increase as well. From signing and retention bonuses, to loan forgiveness and educational opportunities, employers are looking for more ways to attract top talent. With this type of competition, you can’t afford to ignore the need to up your recruitment game.
Sell candidates on the quality of the organization
If you’re desperate to fill a dozen requisitions, it’s easy to forget about what matters most to nurses. “A deep commitment to quality is what’s appealing,” says Sharon Maguire, chief clinical officer at BrightStar Care, a home care provider. Nurses, like other professionals, want to know what’s required of them and what tools and resources they have to do their job well. Make a special effort to highlight the ways in which your organization supports its commitment to quality nursing.
Get new RNs to think outside the hospital
Many millennial nurses — from new graduates to mid-career practitioners — seek similar job situations: big-city hospitals near their family and friends. So, if you’re recruiting for community-based care or other non-hospital settings, you’ve got to get creative with the pitch.
One way to attract nursing candidates is to focus on those seeking greater flexibility and more autonomy in an administrative, consultative, case-management role. Search for applicants who want to try something different from the typical hospital environment.
Compensate lack of experience with strong supervision
Experienced nurses in demanding hospital specialties are hard to come by and hard to keep. So, hospital recruiters must persuade clinical leaders to invest in creative recruitment solutions. To bring in brand new nurses without suffering for lack of experience, it helps to have strong preceptor and mentoring programs. Talk with clinical leaders to see what improvements can be made in these areas.
Think like a millennial about professional development
Many nurses have a growth mindset and are constantly looking for readily available resources to advance their careers. These resources could include mentoring or additional education, like a masters, for example. So, even if it seems premature, pitch your organization’s career resources starting with the first candidate contact.
Help nursing schools accommodate your future hires
Every year, nursing schools turn away tens of thousands of qualified applicants due to insufficient faculty, classrooms, clinical programs, and money according to a the American Association of Colleges of Nursing . Providers can therefore help their own nurse recruitment pipeline by partnering with nursing schools to ease critical bottlenecks in nursing education.
It’s never too soon to start thinking about nurse retention
What keeps nurses from job-hopping? There are many factors that affect retention, but finding ways to treat nurses as partners is key. They want to have a say in how patients are care for and how provider organizations are run. Once you’ve identified your organization’s retention strengths, you can include those selling points among your nursing recruitment strategies.
Combat the toxic workplace
Thanks to the gap between supply and demand, nurses often call the shots in this labor market, especially when they’ve gained a year or two of experience. So, why do so many nurses find themselves in toxic work environments? It’s often the company culture and lackluster leadership.
“Some nurses eat their young,” says Rae Ellen Douglas, a partner at search firm Kaye Bassman International. “So, the organization has to hold incumbent staff accountable to standards of behavior.” The culture must promote helpfulness and not tolerate workplace bullying, which is entrenched in some hospitals, Douglas adds.
Improve your nursing recruitment strategies with a strong dose of Monster
Even when we’re not in the middle of a long nursing shortage, recruiting the best nursing candidates can be tough. It’s important to stay on top of the game by thoroughly assessing your hiring and retention tools. Let Monster Hiring Solutions help by sending you the latest hiring trends, recruitment advice, and more.
Make all employees accountable for their goals and their assignments. Don’t give generic orders; be specific. Delegate duties to individuals and make sure the individual understands the responsibility involved with the task; make sure he/she understands that the accountability of that task rests solely on his/her shoulders.
2. Ensure that you follow up with them about progress at various stages. Don’t delegate duties and go to sleep; follow up on task delegated to ensure effective output. If you can’t follow up; then delegate the role or hire a supervisor to take your place.
. Avoid micro managing while managing people; remember they are humans, not machines. You must provide the best working environment for your employees if you are serious about improving productivity.
. Encourage, reward, motivate and recognize all jobs well done. Nothing inspires an employee more than a big thank you hug from the boss; it makes an employee feel important and that employee will strive to repeat the feat that earned him/her the hug.
Reach out to all the employees working for you. Let them know their welfare is your concern; show them love and care, treat them like human beings.
Set realistic and achievable targets for the workers. Setting goals or targets for your employees improves their productivity, effectiveness and efficiency but make sure the goals are attainable.
that manifests in unfeeling, negative behaviors toward others, and detachment from caring and instructions.33-35
Low Personal Accomplishment (PA): the state of negatively evaluating ones’ self as being incompetent, unsuccessful, and inadequate; consequently, employees exhibit low levels of contribution to their work.33-35
In fact, burnout is a costly problem for both organizations and employees because manifestations of burnout—including reductions in physical and psychological energy, insomnia, headache, fatigue, and depression—lead to an increase in absenteeism and turnover rates and consequently have negative effects on the quality of care.14,34,37,38 Thus, nurse burnout has been studied widely. Abundant studies have examined the influence of different variables on burnout as part of efforts directed to reducing this phenomenon. Lower levels of burnout are associated with professional practice environment characteristics,6 social support,39 and structural and psychological empowerment.9,13,14,19-22 High levels of burnout are linked to work overload,21,39 job dissatisfaction,6,38,39 and turnover.40 Some demographic characteristics are associated with high levels of burnout: low education levels, night-shift work,41 and male gender with married
Problems with highhigh turnover in nursing and ofmaintaining adequate numbers of nurses to supply clinical staffing requirements have a long history and have therefore attracted a commensurate literature with time. An overview and discussion of the situation internationally, with an emphasis on Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and the UK, finds that job satisfaction is often a consistent underlying determinant interacting with workplace factors and personal reasons in complex ways. Effective and adaptive retention strategies are required to meet and mitigate the problem as reasons for it may vary over time. Solutions must be flexible and targeted to meet the individual circumstances identified.
(3)
What do nurses want? What keeps nurses engaged? What can we do
to decrease turnover?
Assuming leadWhaters know what nurses want is dangevidence on
recruitment and retention for the top issues but be skeptical that
it is generalizable to
your population of nurses as a whole. Leaders should systematically
find ways to engage the clini-
cians and nurse leaders in their organization to ask, as the
responses from those key stakeholders
may be different from the evidence, based on many unique factors in
their organizations. Contextual-
izing the interventions is important to the environment, the
population, the resources, and the issues
in each facility. In a recent focus group of 70 nurses from a
three-time Magnet® Designated Hospital
in the southwest with a 27-year history of shared governance, they
identified the factors most import-
ant in retention. They are:
• Professional/personal development
• Sensitivity to life-work balance (develop quality-of-life
initiatives [Kerfoot, 2015])
• Shared governance—voice and impact (high autonomy associated with
improved retention
[Kovner, Djukic, Fatehi, Fletcher, Brewer, & Chacko])
• Drive to continue education by organization (BSN associated with
improved retention
[Kovner et al.])
• Quality of care and outcomes
• Teamwork
• Flexibility (adapt) of care
• High levels of collaboration (interprofessional)
• Loyalty to employees—take care of employees
• Residency program (transition to practice)
• Attention to detail (compliance) and ethics
• Diversity and inclusion (modeling of caring behaviors)
• Innovation supported—evidence-based practice
• Approachable MD colleagues (respect) (positive relationships with
physician improves reten-
tion [Kovner et al.])
• Safety (education) skills