University of Michigan professor Christopher Friese on the results of a recent survey of nurses in Michigan And so that leads to burnout and that leads to nurses heading for the exits." And they don't get the help that they need. " are caring for more complicated patients over time. They're more likely to have to stay longer in the hospital and other settings," he said. Patients are more likely to have complications. "Facilities, for quite some time, have really worked on a model of what is the bare minimum amount of nurse staffing that they need to keep the lights on, so to speak. And of course, the pandemic made things more difficult."Īccording to Friese, today's crisis is the result of longstanding practices. ![]() There's very strong evidence that staffing and safety concerns predated the pandemic. ![]() "Our team and others have shown that workplaces for nurses have been poor for about ten years. "We actually have plenty of nurses, both in Michigan and the United States," he said. Friese said the problem goes back much further than 2020. Hospital administrators often blame the pandemic when they talk about staffing shortages, saying people got burned out and no longer want to do the work. " What they're asking their employers to do is recognize the urgent need to not only retain the current nurses that work in their settings, but to actually bolster staffing so that patients, families and communities can receive the kind of care that nurses know that they expect and they should be able to deliver." Similar legislation has failed multiple times in the past decade. And that's not just in the hospital setting, but in other settings," Friese told Michigan Radio's Morning Edition.Ĭurrent bills before the Michigan Legislature would set mandatory nurse-to-patient staffing ratios. Their workloads are unsafe to deliver care. "What nurses have told us, both in the state of Michigan and across the country, is very clear and consistent. They say it's the fact that people aren't willing to work under the current conditions.Ĭhristopher Friese is a professor of nursing at the University of Michigan and the director of the Center for Improving Patient and Population Health. But some nurses say it's not a worker shortage. At some point I just decided I can't watch this happen anymore," said Parker.Īcross Michigan, hospitals have more than 8,500 nursing jobs they're trying to fill. "The moral injury of not being able to give every single patient the absolute best that I could. What pushed her out of full-time nursing was a feeling of falling short of what her patients deserved. She’s only doing one nursing shift a week. ![]() But after working full-time in the ER for more than 15 years, she now spends most of her time working as a paramedic. "When you don't have an ortho tech, it's the nurses that have to pick up slack and do all of the splints for their patients." ![]() "When you don't have phlebotomists, it's the nurses that have to pick up the slack. Parker also sees nurses handling tasks that used to be assigned to other staff, including drawing blood. These days, Parker said she's often taking care of six patients at a time.Įmergency room nurse Nikia Parker on current working conditions for Michigan nurses When she started working as an emergency room nurse, Parker said she would typically care for up to three patients at a time during a shift. But now we have the pandemic controlled and it's not getting better.” “Before, when we were in the midst of pandemic stress, you could try to see the light at the end of the tunnel and you could try to pretend like, 'Well, when the pandemic's over, this will all get better.' You could pretend. “Now there's this, like, despondency," Parker told Michigan Radio. Nikia Parker is a registered nurse who lives and works in the Traverse City region. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses, doctors, and other health care staff worked grueling hours to try to get a handle on a virus that kept mutating and bringing more and more patients to Michigan hospitals.ĬOVID is still with us, but deaths and hospital stays because of the virus have plummeted.ĭespite that, many nurses say that their working conditions still have not improved.
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