Attracting and retaining nursing staff remains one of the major challenges that healthcare organizations face today.
Nurses desire a positive, collaborative work environment and the opportunity to pursue educational and training opportunities.
In a virtual session from Becker's HR and Talent Virtual Event sponsored by Strategic Education, Inc., Adele Webb, PhD, executive dean of healthcare initiatives at Strategic Education, facilitated a discussion between Katelyn Bloyd, PhD, system director of employee experience at Louisville, Ky.-based Baptist Health, and Rachael Frija, DNP, corporate director of clinical education at Nashville-headquarted Ardent Health Services, about the most significant workforce challenges their organizations face and how they are working to solve these problems.
Four key takeaways were:
1. Healthcare organizations continue to face a staffing crisis. Nursing staffing is already in crisis, nearing its breaking point. But even more concerning is a dismal post-pandemic forecast. Nurses claim a decrease in overall job satisfaction and an increased intent to leave the workforce. In response, health systems are doing everything they can to ensure healthy, safe and thriving work environments.
2. Both Baptist Health and Ardent Health Services are working to create healthy work environments (HWE). Both organizations are implementing the six essential standards of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, which are key to the staff work experience. These standards provide evidence-based guidelines for success. They are:
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- Skilled communication
- True collaboration
- Effective decision-making
- Appropriate staffing
- Meaningful recognition
- Authentic leadership
While developed for nurses, these standards apply for both clinical and non-clinical employees. The healthiest work environments integrate all six standards to help produce effective and sustainable outcomes for both patients and nurses. "We've taken this information and truly integrated it into our people and culture scorecard for engagement," Dr. Bloyd said. Baptist Health calculates a leader composite score, which is a combination of recognition, listening to opinions and inclusion.
Ardent Health learned of a gap in its education benefits through engagement surveys. "We didn't really have professional development opportunities for our non-clinical staff," Dr. Frija said. "We wanted to invest in the staff who want to invest in staying with us."
3. Staff want professional development opportunities. "One study said that 87 percent of millennials would rather have professional development over a pay raise," Dr. Webb said. This insight has inspired organizations to invest in professional education as a key benefit.
Strategic Education offers a Tuition-Aligned Pricing (TAAP) program, which aligns with an organization's level of tuition reimbursement so that employees pay little to nothing out of pocket. Strategic Education also provides Workforce Edge, an automated platform that manages tuition assistance programs at no cost to healthcare organizations. Ardent Health and Baptist Health utilize both of these offerings to provide their staff better access to education benefits.
"Workforce Edge features opportunities for a variety of degrees and certificates, all the way from high school to doctoral programs, both within healthcare and without," Dr. Webb said. In addition, Capella University offers courses in nursing leadership, risk management, telehealth, Spanish for nurses and for pharmacy and population health and social determinants of health.
4. Accessible, easy-to-access professional development opportunities improve staff satisfaction and patient care. "Skill-building opportunities help improve your staff's self-esteem and self-confidence and ultimately improve their patient care," Dr. Webb said. "These are great opportunities for healthcare staff to upskill . . . We know that providing easy opportunities for professional development helps create safe, secure work environments for our employees."