Listen to nurses, the lifeblood of the hospital

I graduated from nursing faculty three years in the past, however I really feel like I’m in Whoville.

I work at Virginia Mason Medical Heart, which was just lately bought by CommonSpirit Well being, a nonprofit hospital chain that operates 140 hospitals in 21 states. 

Now it appears like nobody can hear me or my fellow nurses. 

It’s unclear how selections are being made and what we will do about it. CommonSpirit and different hospital chains should cease governing from the highest down and embody nurses on the desk.  

Nurses are with the sufferers greater than the docs. They typically are those who determine a affected person’s declining situation, and act shortly to avoid wasting them. But when nurses really feel ignored of important selections, unsafe or in any other case unable to do their jobs, affected person care suffers.

Hand-washing is a good instance. Correct hand hygiene or correct cleansing of apparatus between sufferers can go by the wayside when nurses are overwhelmed. The strain to get the whole lot executed as required (typically to guard our skilled licenses) could cause duties to be left incomplete.  

Whereas different hospitals are seeing a internet acquire of nurses, Virginia Mason is scrambling for nurses. The gaps are largely being full of journey nurses, however even then, there aren’t sufficient nurses to go round. Medical-surgical nurses are usually seeing assignments with six sufferers, and on particularly brief days, seven sufferers. That is even increased than once I began in August of 2020 within the top of the pandemic. It’s harmful for everybody — sufferers, workers, backside line — if nurses are given extra sufferers they will deal with. They may burn out and go away like they did through the pandemic.  

From September 2022 to August 2023, in accordance with the Washington State Nurses Affiliation, Virginia Mason was down 60 nurses — 9.5% of the workforce, in accordance with hospital staffing numbers. However different space hospitals, akin to Seattle Youngsters’s and UW Drugs, are seeing internet good points of nurses, from 7% to 10%. In Washington state, we now have greater than 100,000 nurses who’re licensed, in accordance with the Washington Center for Nursing. That’s a lot to fill the 61,000 jobs obtainable. 

However nobody needs to work in an unsafe setting. At Virginia Mason, a nurse was just lately stabbed within the face. One other nurse barely missed being hit by a claw hammer. Sufferers have introduced in different weapons. What we want is a metallic detector and a tradition that takes office violence significantly. However in Whoville, it’s arduous to get that message heard. 

Fortuitously, Washington enacted a safe staffing law this year that may present better enforcement of staffing plans and can not enable CEOs to veto them. Vetoing staffing plans tells the front-line staff that their opinion doesn’t matter. 

Sarah DiGregorio, in her new guide, “Taking Care: The Story of Nursing and its Energy to Change the World,” writes that nurses as we speak are being pushed into the background and their experience ignored. However centuries in the past they had been revered for his or her data and abilities in therapeutic the sick. 

As our well being care system is consolidated by large chains, governing from the underside up will guarantee caring for sufferers and caring for workers is a prime precedence. And to try this, it is advisable to hearken to nurses, the lifeblood of the hospital.