Scripps News Live - Scripps News Live - Anne Dabrow Woods
Video Player
>> America has a nursing shortage. Millions felt the pain of that shortage during the pandemic which left existing nurses burned out and even push many of them out of the field entirely. The shortage is expected to intensify as the American population ages and the need for health care grows. But efforts to mitigate this problem are underway across states in Florida, a 10 million dollars commitment from 2 leading health care systems is hoping to boost nurse numbers. They're also bills in states like New York and Pennsylvania that would implement a patient to nurse ratio to help ease their burden. Joining me now, doctor and Deborah Woods, the chief nurse at Wolters Kluwer in Pennsylvania. Thank you so much for joining us. And I want to start with basics here. Can you just tell us a little bit about the factors that are behind the north? The nurse shortage? You know, a shortage right now really came NBA after the pandemic. We
00:01:01
always knew there was going to be a nurse shortage.
>> But what we didn't anticipate is that nurses were going retire at the amount that they did. Nurses leave the profession and other nurses were going to decide to leave the bedside because things are so difficult at the bedside right now.
>> 6 really coming from different directions here. Can you give us an idea of the effect that this shortage is having on existing nurses?
>> Well, right now, the nurses that are left at the bedside are very happy because they feel that they can't practice safely. So if we can practice safely at the bedside because we don't have an adequate number of experienced and trained nurses to practice alongside of U.S.. Patient care is going to be impacted. You know, nurses want to take care of people. That's what we do. But now we're being faced with a situation where we can't do that because there's simply not enough of us at the bedside to care for people who need the help.
>> So we have mentioned this a little bit at the top. There are now bills in New York and
00:02:02
Pennsylvania where you are, which would implement a minimum patient to nurse practioner ratio, like if you will, what are your thoughts on these bills and you think that's a good step to address that pressure that you just explained.
>> You know, better health care, a world health care systems with start to regulate themselves. But that is not what we're seeing. So nurses are actually thankful that organizations in the states are stepping up and saying that they need to do something to help patient safety order do that, they need to implement minimum patient. A nurse ratios.
>> Can you talk about the cost of this, though? You know, could this bill potentially increase health care costs or affect the number of patients. A hospital can treat. Well, certainly is going to have an impact on costs for health care organizations.
>> Laborer workforce and hospitals is 50% over overall budget. But that means meet the biggest chance to make impact on revenue or
00:03:03
reimbursement. If you're able to bring an adequate number of properly, trained, educated, experienced nurses to the bedside, you're going improve patient outcomes and it turned that will improve reimbursement for health care systems.
>> When you talk about, though, bringing those nurses back to the bedside, what incentives exist right now to really make that happen?
>> That's the issue We have a lot of incentives, bonuses to break, get nurses to come back to work. But when they get into the work situation and they realize the staffing is not safe, they want to leave. So what we really need to do is focus more on retention, keeping the talent within organization instead of letting it lead, doing things like flexible staffing, really making sure that the benefits that are offer really what nurses and other healthcare professionals want. But the bottom line, it's having enough nurses at the bedside.
00:04:03
So if you have a patient that's in trouble, you know, there's somebody there to back you up experience and has the skills to be there to support you.
>> Very quick here. We've got about 30 seconds. One thing that I remember from previous reporting on this issue are the use of non-compete contracts. That nurses would sign that would help with that retention. It's my understanding. Some things have shifted around noncompete clauses were or really the contracts themselves has that affected anything regarding this issue on a shortage of nurses?
>> The health care system was doing what I'm supposed to do. We wouldn't really compete closets, right? Because the talent would stay where it belongs. So absolutely could keep clauses. You have nurses that are can able to work around where they live in and if they can't work where they lived, they're not going to come back to the bedside to take care of the people who are in need of care.
>> Doctor and Deborah Woods, chief nurse at Wolters Kluwer.
00:05:03
Thank you so much for being
Scripps News Live - Scripps News Live - Anne Dabrow Woods
News
06/22/2023 09:18:25 PM
06/22/2023 09:23:29 PM