The healthcare landscape continues to evolve, but one thing remains the same—the nursing workforce still plays a pivotal role in delivering high-quality care and driving positive patient outcomes.
But, as the needs of nurses and healthcare systems change, it is time to reimagine the clinical workforce. The nursing workforce of the future needs to embrace a new mindset and culture that leverages technology and digital platforms. Together these characteristics support flexibility, efficiency, and well bring.
To start, we’ll need to explore challenges of staffing dynamics post pandemic, and then consider how technology, and the push for a more flexible workforce, is shaping the future of nursing.
Here is what nurse staffing looks like now—and how we can move forward
During the pandemic, we saw upheaval in the dynamics of the workforce, including a spike in contract contingent labor. While that spike has passed, we are now encountering a combination of new issues and a resurgence of some previous ones, including workforce shortages related to burnout and turnover and budgetary constraints. To address these issues, healthcare organizations can embrace flexibility.
For nurses, this new flexibility means the ability to choose shifts based on availability and personal preferences and being able to select from a variety of scheduling options, from part-time to full-time, per diem, and flexible shift arrangements.
For healthcare systems, a more flexible approach can include alternative scheduling models, more robust float pools, cross-training, and flexible staffing arrangements to meet fluctuating demands. Building scheduling and staffing systems to address labor spend, while keeping nurses satisfied and engaged, requires effective planning and ongoing visibility into nurse and staff utilization across the enterprise. Systems that leverage technology and digital platforms will enable nurse leaders to better understand their current state and effectively anticipate short- and long-term workforce demand, thereby driving more strategic, cost-effective deployment decisions.
How to build a new, more flexible healthcare workforce
Today, many healthcare facilities rely on nurse scheduling software that puts the focus on day-to-day deployment and management of nurse shifts. Nurse managers, who are the primary owners of scheduling and staffing at the department level, allocate and align staff based on estimated demand and the average census and acuity of patient care needs. This often leads to over- or under-staffing as volume and acuity demands fluctuate. And this, in turn, can drive up the salary dollar per patient per day by using overtime or external contingent resources.
Put another way, nurse managers are trying to schedule and manage a sophisticated, specialized, and complex workforce using outdated, generic, and disconnected systems, and the organizations are paying the price in nurse and staff turnover, escalating labor costs, and increased compliance risk. Traditional nurse scheduling systems also take a toll on nurse managers. In the best of circumstances, scheduling requires significant time and energy. In the worst circumstances, nurse managers scramble to adjust to changing demands—using up precious time they could be spending on leadership and overseeing patient care.
For example, imagine this: you are the nurse manager for an 80-bed NICU. When everything happens as planned, it’s a well-oiled machine. But in the real world, it’s uncommon for everything to stay on track for even four hours. There is the shift with four more babies than you expected and three who are sicker than you’d imagined. Now, as the nurse manager, you’re calling, texting, begging, borrowing, and stealing the resources you need.
Most nurse managers (80%) working in units with high turnover reported being responsible for over 50 staff members (full-time, part-time, travelers, and per diem), with approximately 25% reporting having a span of control of more than 100 staff members. They also report that increased administrative tasks (e.g., hiring, scheduling) interrupted the time they would normally spend with staff, leaving them with less availability to grow and mentor staff. Many reported having to shift their leadership style to one that is more reactionary and transactional, with more time spent putting out fires and jumping from task to task, and less time for growing staff and developing true connection.
With these challenges in mind—the costs of healthcare staffing, the most effective use of nurse leaders’ time, and delivering the highest quality patient care—we need a new path forward. Nurse leaders need systems, such as Hallmark’s healthcare-native Workforce Intelligence and Engagement platform, that centralize staffing data, offer a holistic view of staffing needs, show how resources are being used, and provide prescriptive guidance for making more informed decisions.
Leveraging technology with a digital platform is one of the most important ways that we can meet this moment in healthcare. That is why, with more than 40 years of experience as a nurse and healthcare leader, I recently decided to join Hallmark as a Chief Nurse Executive.
As a partner, Hallmark lets healthcare systems tap into performance metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and benchmarking data to evaluate the efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness of the staffing and scheduling system, and then gives them the tools to modernize their approach to clinical workforce management.
All of this means that healthcare systems can allocate resources better, spend less on staffing, bring in the right clinicians when they need them, align with clinicians’ goals to keep them happier and—here’s the most important part—give nurses and nurse managers the time and job satisfaction that translates to better care for patients. Because that’s why we all joined the healthcare profession in the first place.
Our goal at Hallmark is to provide a unified platform that gives healthcare systems a complete view into their workforce, empowering them to plan and manage costs so they can do what matters most: provide the very best care for their patients. Want to know more? Please contact us for a demo here.
By Andrea Mazzoccoli, Chief Nurse Executive at Hallmark