Proper investment in nursing is what is needed and not empty executive platitudes, says Rebecca Love, MSN, RN, TedTalk speaker and chief clinical officer for nurse staffing company IntelyCare.
Speaking exclusively to Becker's, Ms. Love said the persistent narrative of a labor shortage in healthcare misses the point, with an all-time high of about 5 million qualified nurses in the country.
The real problem is that many health systems and their executives fail to invest properly in retaining such qualified staff by making their work environments attractive places to be. Instead, all that is typically offered are empty words.
"I think nurses are well aware of the emptiness of platitudes by hospital executives when discussing the nursing crisis," she said. "Statements like 'heroes work here' or 'I can't thank our nurses enough' often come across to the frontline nurses as empty platitudes similar to the statement of thoughts and prayers said by our elected officials after a mass casualty event."
The lack of priority given to nurses is evident in the reality that nurses are the only healthcare professionals who do not have reimbursable services, Ms. Love added.
"This places nurses as the only healthcare professionals that are a 100 percent cost to healthcare systems, and as such, nurses are staffed to the lowest cost denominator in all healthcare settings," she said.
With more than half of newly qualified nurses needing a side gig to make ends meet, overstretched workers are under increasing pressure, which will lead to more medical errors similar to the RaDonda Vaught case, said Ms. Love. Ms. Vaught was convicted in 2022 for a fatal medication error made in 2017.
"It's always the nurses that are written up," she said. "I don't think we as nurses ever thought we could go to jail for making a mistake. All of us could have been RaDonda Vaught."
Much more than words akin to "thoughts and prayers" must be offered to the nation's nursing staff, including the reimbursement for services.
"As we all know in business, where the money goes, so does investment," Ms. Love said. "And if there is one place that healthcare must invest to stabilize a crumbling delivery system, it is investing in nursing. And the only way to invest in nursing is to create reimbursement for nursing services."