An acute and growing shortage of nurses in US hospitals has been a factor in almost one-quarter of all adverse events resulting in death, injury or permanent loss of function over the past 5 years, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) reports.
The commission, which inspects and accredits American hospitals, says inadequate nurse staffing levels contributed to 42% of surgery-related incidents, 25% of transfusion problems and 19% of medication errors during the period. They are also “a major factor in emergency department overcrowding and in the cancellation of elective surgeries.” The report, Health Care at the Crossroads: Strategies for Addressing the Evolving Nursing Crisis, concludes that with more than 126 000 acute care nursing positions currently vacant and with an estimated shortfall of some 400 000 nurses in the US by 2020, “what is already a bad situation only threatens to worsen.”
“With the nursing shortage we have a ‘perfect storm’ brewing,” said registered nurse Marilyn Chow, a member of the roundtable that prepared the report. “We have aging nurses [and] aging nursing faculties. We have fewer people choosing to come into nursing … and we have millions of baby boomers whose health needs will grow exponentially.”
The report notes that the average age of a working registered nurse in the US is 43, and by 2010 it will be 50. At the same time, young people are shunning nursing as a career.
In a survey cited in the report, 56% of registered nurses said their main reason for wanting to leave the field was to find work that is less stressful and physically demanding; 22% wanted more regular hours, while 18% wanted higher pay and 14% better advancement opportunities. The average salary for a medical-surgical nurse is US$46 000; critical care nurses earn US$64 000.
Mary Foley, immediate past president of the American Nurses Association, thinks the fundamental problem is that nurses “just don't feel valued. They don't want to work in an unsatisfactory environment.” — Milan Korcok, Florida