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Hospitals, nurses, thought leaders, and policymakers must address the potential long-range impacts of negative depictions of nurses and hospitals. We need to regroup and commit to fixing current and long-standing problems together, rethinking and planning for improving patient care in a post-COVID world, and supporting one another to achieve our aspirations for a better future. A Category 5 nursing shortage must be avoided to ensure the health of the nation, stability of healthcare delivery systems, and future growth of the nursing workforce.
Here we are once again talking, tweeting, and social messaging about an "unprecedented nursing shortage." Over the past 18 months, the COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted horrible tolls on patients, families, nurses, and healthcare systems. As the highly contagious Delta variant rages and hospital admissions have spiked, growing attention has focused on nursing shortages. This focus prompts questions about whether there are different types of nursing shortages and whether hospitals were facing shortages before the pandemic began. Looking to the future, could unchecked sensationalism and unsubstantiated claims about current shortages negatively affect the capacity of the future post-COVID nursing workforce? Can historical precedents help us anticipate how the nursing workforce might fare over the decade? What can be done to prevent long-lasting shortages?
To address these questions, this commentary begins by distinguishing background shortages from national shortages, discusses factors that were creating shortages in hospitals prior to the pandemic, and concludes by considering how the pandemic, and our collective reactions to it, could impact the growth and stability of the nursing workforce in coming years.
Background vs. National Nursing Shortages
When hearing someone say their hospital is experiencing a nursing shortage, I want to know how large it is, what is the strength and source of the evidence (high-quality empirical, published/ peer-reviewed, or mostly anecdotal), and does the evidence point to a local shortage or one that is spreading and affecting many hospitals and nurses across states and regions of the country.
Background nursing shortages develop when forces temporarily alter the demand or supply of nurses. Such shortages almost always resolve and do not become permanent. For example, consider a hospital where four of seven labor and delivery nurses begin maternity leave at nearly the same time, leaving the hospital facing an acute...