“I worry about the long-term erosion of quality of care for our patients if we do not proactively address these shortages by focusing on efforts to retain physicians and other healthcare workers,” Mehta says. “Additionally, reimbursement cuts and rising inflation without corresponding increases in salaries further threaten the healthcare workforce.”
Malone says hospitals are losing many of their seasoned nurses to other specialty fields within healthcare and should be building more clinical and work-life balance support for nurses. Due to pandemic pressures and a lack of resources, many hospital nurses have found employment in community healthcare, pharmacies and other settings.
“It’s almost like another world opened up to nurses beyond the hospital,” Malone says. “It remains important. But the pandemic put us in a position where we felt we were not able to do the work that we love: saving lives.”
DISCOVER: Learn how technology can alleviate effects of the nursing shortage.
Focus on Staff Retention with Recognition and Engagement
Retaining research and nursing staff has been the biggest challenge, says Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez, associate director of community outreach and thoracic oncology at the University of Miami Health System’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. Many staff have pursued remote positions after a tough two years, and onsite hospital work is becoming less desirable, she says.
“Others have referred to this period as ‘The Great Resignation,’ and it is not an exaggeration. Some of our research teams lost half of their staff during the COVID-19 pandemic and had to rehire and retrain staff. The process of finding new staff and onboarding can take several months and it can delay research progress,” Rodriguez says.