A growing number of health systems are embracing four-day workweeks for nurse leaders — a strategy that has helped some boost recruitment, retention and staff engagement.
Over the past year, the needs and well-being of nurse managers have come into focus, with hospitals and health systems taking a closer look at how to best support them in addition to bedside nurses. Survey findings have indicated nurse managers have a hard time fully disconnecting from work, and they crave much of the same work environment factors that front-line nurses do, such as the ability to take time off when needed and work-life balance support.
As such, four-day schedules have increasingly become part of the conversation at many hospitals and health systems.
Nearly two years ago, Mount Sinai Health System in New York City began offering nurse managers the ability to work four 10-hour days instead of the typical five-days-a-week schedule. Feedback on the program has been overwhelmingly positive, Mount Sinai nurse executives told Becker's in March. It has proved an effective tool to boost nurse manager engagement and retention, which extends to the nursing teams they lead.
The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus and Atlantic City, N.J.-based AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center have also begun offering four-day workweeks to nurse managers.
"That has definitely made the job much more attractive and we've been able to recruit because of that," Wexner Medical Center's chief nursing officer, Deana Sievert, DNP, RN, previously told Becker's. "We have to relieve them of their 24/7 responsibility. … They can't be everything to everybody 24/7."
At AtlantiCare, nurse managers meet every few months. With calendars in hand, they split into pairs and coordinate which days off they want off and when they will cover for their partner.
"I think it has actually made us stronger because when you're covering the other person's team, you have to build rapport with that team," Danielle Dilella, RN, a nurse manager at the hospital, told NPR. "You have to develop trust with that team. … So it kind of gives you a more global perspective of what's happening in the hospital."
Similarly, New Orleans-based Ochsner Health is considering four-day workweek options for nurse leaders, as well as how artificial intelligence and predictive modeling can make staff scheduling easier for them.
"We are just looking at leadership differently [this year], knowing that they are the ones that really sit in the middle of patients, our front-line staff, and really are the key to our strategy for the system," Tiffany Murdock, DNP, RN, Ochsner's senior vice president and chief nursing officer, previously told Becker's.