Workplace safety is a topic of major concern and discussion for workers and employers in a variety of occupations and workplace settings. In nursing, patient safety is an essential and vital component of quality nursing care. However, the recent Ebola outbreak and the growing risks of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms have created a heightened awareness around the fact that nursing is still one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States. This raises the following question: Just how safe are nurses in the work setting? In this 21st century, one may easily assume that nurse safety has been addressed. However, the answer is not clear.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that the health care sector continues to be the most dangerous place to work in America. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), health care workers are confronted with the following job hazards: bloodborne pathogens and biological hazards; potential chemical and drug exposures; waste anesthetic gas exposures; respiratory hazards; ergonomic hazards from lifting and repetitive tasks; laser hazards; workplace violence; hazards associated with laboratories; and radioactive material and X-ray hazards. In 2010, there were 653,900 workplace injuries and illnesses in the health care sector, which is more than 152,000 more injuries than the manufacturing sector, according to a 2013 Public Citizen report.
The paradigm for promoting nurse safety is changing, but slowly, and has not kept up with the technology to prevent injury, says Amber Hogan Mitchell, DrPH, MPH, CPH, president and executive director of the International Safety Center. “There have been a lot of advances over the last few decades to significantly improve nurses’ safety, but more can be done to collect and analyze data that would help speed adoption of innovative technology and spur swifter action to revise and implement stronger safety-related best practices and policies.”
The issue of nurse safety is pervasive. Unfortunately, musculoskeletal injuries are common from lifting patients without enough assistance. Nurses lift the equivalent of 1.8 tons every eight hours. Unanticipated exposures to blood and body fluids (BBFs) pose infection and illness risks to nurses on a daily basis. In the process of caregiving, patients or family members occasionally strike out at the nursing staff. Assaults from patients and patient visitors are far from being listed as isolated incidents.
“Health care has reached a critical tipping point,” says Alexandra Robbins, author of the New York Times bestseller The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles with the Heroes of the Hospital. “With looming physician shortages and an increasing demand for services, workplaces will have no choice but to make changes to accommodate nurses, our largest health care provider.”
Clinically Proven Textile Technology About one in two nurses experience blood exposure, other than from a needle stick, on their skin or in their eyes, nose, or mouth at least once a month, according to a 2012 study by the International Healthcare Worker Safety Center at the University of Virginia. In fact, nurses experience these exposures most often while providing direct care, when they are least expecting it and not wearing protective clothing, according to data from the International Safety Center’s Exposure Prevention Information Network (EPINet).
In order to better protect nurses from unexpected exposures to harmful pathogens, we need to first address the role their daily attire can play in protecting them, says Barbara DeBaun, RN, MSN, CIC, consulting vice president of clinical affairs at Vestagen Technical Textiles, Inc. When exposure is unexpected and nurses are not donning personal protective equipment (PPE), traditional scrubs leave nurses vulnerable to direct contact with harmful contaminants that stay with them all shift long.
“Traditional scrubs allow micro-organisms, blood, and other body fluids to leach through the fabric, resulting in nurses carrying contaminants from patient to patient and home to their families,” DeBaun says. “New ‘active-barrier’ textile technologies, made with fabric such as Vestex, contain fluid-repellent, antimicrobial, and breathability properties.”
Debaun explains that this innovative fabric technology combination is key in helping reduce the acquisition, retention, and transmission of harmful pathogens on health care worker attire. Working together, the fluid-repellent barrier causes harmful contaminants to bead up and roll off the fabric, and the antimicrobial agent limits growth of bacteria on the fabric. Vestex’s active-barrier apparel is currently the only textile technology that has shown clinical effectiveness at reducing MRSA infections by 99.9%, in comparison to traditional attire.
Active-barrier apparel is already available in scrubs and white coats for health care workers and health care facilities to purchase. Hospitals such as Baptist Health in Jacksonville, Florida, have already established a systemwide uniform policy that requires staff to wear active-barrier protective uniforms. The organization made a commitment in 2014 to transition more than 6,000 workers, and all patient attire, to Vestex garments to enhance their culture of safety.
“As more data shows the risk that attire can play in transferring harmful contaminants, we believe that advancements in textile technologies will soon become the new industry standard for nurses in all health care settings,” DeBaun says.
Better Security Nursing is the third most dangerous profession in the country because the vast majority of nurses are attacked by the people they are trying to help. According to data from the BLS, U.S. health care workers experience the most nonfatal workplace violence compared to other professions by a wide margin, with attacks on them accounting for almost 70% of all nonfatal workplace assaults and causing days away from work.
In 2014, 68-year-old Charles Emmett Logan, a patient at a Minnesota hospital, attacked a group of nurses with a pipe pulled from his hospital bed. The incident, which was caught on video, showed Logan running through the nurse’s station wielding a metal pole, hoisting it over his head, and hitting nearby nurses who attempted to flee the scene. One nurse suffered a collapsed lung, another fractured her wrist, and others had cuts and bruises. Medical staff told police that Logan, who died in police custody, suffered from paranoia.
“Hospitals do not protect their nurses, and it’s time they do,” says Robbins. “There is so much more that can be done, both tangible changes and major shifts in attitudes.”
Some hospitals believe that posting security personnel near triage looks negative, so they don’t put enough security staff at the entry points to the hospital and near triage. This puts the triage staff at risk when patients who are high, drunk, or psychotic come in the door, explains Robbins.
After the episode in Minnesota, the hospital initiated a training program to teach workers how to recognize and de-escalate potentially violent situations. However, many hospitals lack this basic safety measure — an oversight that leaves caregivers vulnerable.
“Understandably, nurses are focused on providing the highest quality and safest care to their patients, and often at the unintended risk of not protecting themselves,” Mitchell says. “A shift towards promoting a culture of safety that encompasses both patient and worker safety and security can create an overall better, more effective health care environment.”
To help promote a culture of safety, Robbins recommends that hospitals take the following steps:
• Install metal detectors to reduce the chances of patients or visitors injuring nurses and other staff members with weapons.
• Keep a computer database that flags patients known to be belligerent or aggressive.
• Install bulletproof glass and beef up security.
• Practice safe staffing and hire enough nurses so that the nurse–patient ratios are safe.
“The secret to improving American health care is to hire more nurses and insist that workplaces do a better job of protecting our frontline responders,” Robbins adds.
New Policies and Procedures Exposures to BBFs pose a very large safety risk to nurses. According to data from EPINet, 47.7% of nurses were exposed to BBFs while on the job in 2012. Perhaps even more alarming, from 2003 to 2012, 83.9% had BBFs touch unprotected skin. These rates are high because nurses aren’t protected from unanticipated exposures, and compliance with PPE is surprisingly low. There is mounting evidence as well that nurses’ attire is contaminated with pathogens and can thus become a vector of transmission to other nurses as well as the patients they treat.
Mitchell believes that hospitals need to have programs in place that not only promote the use of PPE, but also measure compliance. This type of surveillance can allow the facility to identify where risks are high and compliance is low, and target programs in those areas, thus reducing exposures and reducing risk.
“EPINet is free to use and is an example of a surveillance system that can help hospitals to reduce risks,” Mitchell says. “The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health [NIOSH] is launching a national system called the Occupational Health Safety Network [OHSN], and it is compatible with EPINet. Using systems like these allow facilities to compare themselves to others like them and to constantly improve.”
It is important to remember that safety is guided by a hierarchy of controls, which means that it is important first to eliminate hazards and risks to the lowest possible extent. Mitchell says this is done using engineering controls such as safety-engineered devices that eliminate or protect needles (e.g., needleless IV systems, retracting or shielded needles used on syringes, and blunt suture needles). For exposures to BBFs that splash and splatter, engineering controls might include closed systems for suction canisters or spill-resistant specimen containers. It may even include the use of new innovations in textiles, including those that are fluid-repellent and antimicrobial so that BBFs run right off of them, and fluids don’t soak in to the skin.
There will always be more that can be done to address nursing safety risks, Mitchell believes. Organizations like OSHA, NIOSH, and the Association of PeriOperative Registered Nurses, are always open to feedback, and it is only in providing them with your experiences and opinions that they can provide better guidance.
Mitchell adds that addressing nursing safety risks means creating the safest possible working environments and identifying and measuring hazards, so that programs and interventions can be designed to target and prevent them.
“This involves frontline nurses contributing to the review, evaluation, and selection of engineering controls, medical devices, and even textiles used in their hospitals,” Mitchell says. “Finally, it means working together across specialties, across units, across facilities, and across disciplines to share ideas, foster collaboration, and learn from each other.”
Terah Shelton Harris is a freelance writer based in Alabama.
Are you stuck in a rut at work? If so, it might be time to consider a promotion. You may not have the authority to make that happen exactly, but you shouldn’t wait around expecting to be noticed either. You can—and should be—your strongest supporter. If you’re ready to take charge, here are 10 proactive ways to help you take that next step in your career.
1. Don’t Wait to Get Started
Don’t put off getting your career going, advises Beverly Malone, PhD, RN, CEO of the National League for Nursing (NLN) in New York City. “A lot of young people in particular will say, ‘I don’t know exactly what I want to do, so I’m going to wait before I make a move,’” she explains. “My advice is get started, even if you have to change directions later.”
For Malone, starting her career moves early made it possible to have a highly varied and distinguished career. The eldest of seven siblings, she was raised by her great-grandmother in rural Kentucky. As a young nurse, she worked in a psychiatric unit. Later, she served as dean and vice-chancellor of a historically black college. Then she became president of the American Nurses Association (ANA). And before taking the helm of the NLN, she lived in London, serving as general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing.
One of the hardest decisions for young nurses is choosing a field of study for a degree. “Don’t be too concerned about what kind of degree you get,” Malone advises. “There will always be something you can do with it later.” For example, she no longer works as a psychiatric nurse, but she says her experiences in the field still serve her well.
2. Be a Team Player
You can’t rise through the ranks without being a team player, argues Kanoe Allen, RN, MSN-CNS, PHN, ONC, executive director of nursing at Hoag Orthopedic Institute in Irvine, California. “Understand the staff you are working with,” she suggests. “The team can make or break you.” She also recommends volunteering for extra duties. “It allows other people to see you,” she says.
Raised in a family of Chinese, Japanese, and Hawaiian descent, Allen rose rapidly as a young nurse. Taking a job at a critical care ED, she was named charge nurse within a year and became interim administrator a year after that. A rapidly rising young nurse might have ruffled a lot of feathers among older nurses, but Allen thinks she “garnered some good will from the staff.”
Allen puts a lot of emphasis on social skills. “You need to understand the interplay between personalities and departments and work in a collaborative manner,” she advises. She still finds these skills invaluable as an administrator. “You have to really listen to your team,” she adds.
3. Find a Mentor
Finding a mentor is important to your career, because mentors know about “the back stairs,” Malone says, referring to the secrets of getting ahead in a large organization like a hospital. As a floor nurse, “you know there’s a door to go up, but you don’t know where the door is until a mentor shows you it.”
Sasha DuBois, RN, MSN, a 29-year-old floor nurse at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, relies on several mentors to show her the way. She acquired her first mentor in nursing school, when she heard her making a speech. “I walked up to her afterwards and struck up a friendship,” DuBois recalls. “She’s invested in seeing me grow.” They get together at least once a year.
Allen advises young nurses to cultivate people who are very accessible to them and can serve as career coaches. “A coach is someone who can be honest and tactful,” she says. “She can provide supportive feedback and help you with your own critical thinking.”
4. Follow Your Passion
You can’t have a successful career unless you are passionate about your work, argues Maria S. Gomez, RN, MPH, founder of Mary’s Center for Maternal & Child Care in Washington, DC. “If you want to achieve anything, you have to have a passion,” she says. “If you only care about your own job, it’s easy to get burnt out. You just go to work and come home.”
As an immigrant from Colombia at age 13, Gomez did not know any English except “thank you.” When she went to work in a large organization as a young nurse, she was unable to find a mentor. ‘The older nurses I worked with didn’t like their work,” she says. “I couldn’t wait to move on.”
She found her calling working at a public health department. “I saw a lot of injustices, and I wanted to make a difference,” she explains. In 1988, she founded Mary’s Center as a shelter for women immigrants from Latin America. Today, the organization has a budget of $39 million and provides care at six locations for low-income women, children, and men in the DC area.
5. Go Back to School
Going back to school to get a higher degree or certification is really about “creating opportunities for yourself,” says Kerry A. Major, MSN, RN, NE-BC, chief nursing officer for Cleveland Clinic Florida. “A degree can open multiple doors and help you find out what your passion is,” she says. “A lot of young nurses don’t realize all the choices that are out there.”
A degree makes you more competitive, Major says. At many hospitals, a master’s degree is a requirement for entry into management. But apart from spiffing up your resume, a degree is an opportunity to learn new skills. “The literature shows that a degree produces a more rounded nurse,” she explains.
Major notes that school is a great opportunity to mix with nurses from other walks of life who you might never have met within your own institution. “You can get an idea of all the opportunities that are out there,” she says. “You’ll meet someone who works in public health, and someone else is an operative nurse.”
6. Nurture Your Communications Skills
Speaking and communications skills become more important the further you move up the career ladder, says Glenda Totten, RN, MSN, CNS, PHN, director of nursing service at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center.
Totten is constantly honing her skills. She identified a senior manager with a great communication style and started paying attention to what he says and how he says it. “I listen intently,” she says. “He’s very precise. He doesn’t beat around the bush when answering questions. He’s able to give bad news in a realistic way, without sugarcoating it or kowtowing. And he’s open to feedback.”
Totten can practice her communication skills in many ways, including serving on a nursing quality improvement committee. She is also responsible for coming up with tools to quickly inform frontline nurses about changes in the hospital policies.
7. Read Voraciously
Don’t forget to read. It can help you improve your communications skills, find new role models, and get on-the-job training. “Reading increases your written and verbal comprehension, improves your vocabulary, and widens the topics you can talk about,” says Totten.
Through reading, Malone says she discovered a new mentor named Mary Seacole, a Jamaican-born nurse who worked in 19th century Britain. In a parallel career to that of Florence Nightingale, Seacole tended to troops in the Crimean War. “Sometimes having a mentor just means having that person in mind when you’re trying to accomplish something,” Malone explains.
Reading is also a good way to pick up new skills. Consider checking out The Nurse Manager’s Survival Guide: Practical Answers to Everyday Problems by Tina M. Marrelli, which is now in its third edition.
You can also take webinars. The “Nurse Manager Development Series” was designed by Lippincott’s Nursing Management journal and ANA to help new nurse managers develop their skills. Topics include retaining talent, managing disruptive behavior, conflict resolution, budgeting, and finance.
8. Volunteer for Assignments
Volunteering for assignments outside of your department helps broaden your skills and makes you a better candidate for promotion, says Juanita Hall, BSN, RN, a nurse manager for cardiology, outpatient treatment center, and dialysis at Providence Hospital in Washington, DC. “Get experience in different departments,” she advises. “Volunteer to be the float nurse.” For example, Hall volunteered to work in dialysis, where she didn’t have much background.
As a young nurse, Hall didn’t initially seek promotion, but she was always willing to learn new things. “I wanted to know what was going on,” she says, and because she was involved in many activities, “my name would come up to the nurse manager.” Even though Hall didn’t have a master’s degree, she got a job as an assistant nurse manager.
“It’s important for nurses to be willing to absorb,” Hall says. “Take in all you can from others. Ask questions [and] show yourself as very interested in what others have to say, so that people feed the information to you.”
9. Don’t Let Ambition Get Out of Control
Hard work and dedication are always welcome, but sometimes a person’s ambition ends up alienating others. “My position is that good things will come to you,” says Hall. “You don’t have to beat anyone up to get to them.” An associate minister in her church, Hall relies on her spirituality to center herself.
Nurses can also be susceptible to burnout if they take on too many assignments. The prime time for burnout comes when studying for an advanced degree while still holding down a full-time job. When DuBois was studying for her master’s degree, she was working 36 hours a week and taking three classes each semester. “I didn’t get burnt out, but I can see how it could happen,” she says. “Everyone has to figure out how much you can handle. It’s about balance.”
Even with her studies completed, DuBois still maintains a busy schedule, including a morning workout in the gym on off-days. “A lot of my friends look at my calendar and think I’m crazy,” she says. But she also reserves time for fun. “I like going out to a party or birthday. I feed off of that. That’s my time to let my hair down.”
10. Use Your Organization’s Career Ladder
Many organizations offer career-ladder programs, which offer higher pay or more responsibilities to nurses who demonstrate their skills, according to Shawana Burnette, OB-RNC, MSN, CLNC, a nurse manager on High Risk Post Partum and High Risk OB at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Burnette’s hospital’s ladder process rates bedside nurses on engagement and certification and rewards them with a higher pay level. Nurses who achieve the next rung of the ladder, RN II, get a 10% raise. At higher levels, nurses may be asked to be a preceptor and orient new hires or a nursing student. “The focus is to encourage professional growth and to reward highly engaged nurses in your facility,” she explains.
The ladder process encourages earning certificates in various fields. Burnette is currently studying for a nurse leadership certificate. She says her hospital strongly encourages certification and even provides tuition reimbursement to take review classes to prepare for the certificate exam.
Enjoy the Journey
Nurses who continuously nurture their careers will reap great benefits as they advance up the ladder, argues Allen. “Your nursing career is a journey,” she says. “It’s an incredible journey. It will involve hard work and reaching something meaningful to you.”
Leigh Page is a Chicago-based freelance writer specializing in health care topics.
It’s 8:00 a.m. and Christa Thompson, BSN, RN,* is travelling to a local Houston hospital to educate nursing staff on the latest medical device. A typical day is anywhere from two hours up to 12 hours for her, but she’s not unusually tired or stressed by the end of the day. A nurse for over five and a half years, Thompson is a RN by trade and works part-time as an independent clinical consultant training other people on the use of medical devices. She credits her nursing education and curiosity at an international nursing conference for getting her this job.
“I went up to a medical device booth at the conference and asked the representative if they hired nurses, simply out of curiosity,” says Thompson. “I was pretty much hired on the spot.” She loves her consultant job and knows her new career is a dream job for most nurses, but nursing is not where her true passion lies.
Thompson plans on leaving nursing to become a doctor. Nursing has been a rewarding career for her, but she realizes she can’t do nursing forever, even if her intentions weren’t to continue on to medical school. She is not alone in the sentiment that nursing at the bedside is not something that most nurses can do for their entire career. Her path to transition from the bedside is unique but not uncommon to many nurses in the profession.
Of the 3,514,679 nurses in the United States, nearly 63.2% of RNs and 29.3% of LPNs work in a hospital setting. The RN Work Project reports an average of 33.5% of new RNs leave the bedside within the first two years. Leaving the bedside to pursue other nursing positions does not necessarily mean nurses leave the profession, but it is a catalyst to do so. Why do some nurses leave the bedside and eventually the profession? Ask any nurse and the answers are varied, but common themes seem to ring true for most.
Why Nurses Leave the Bedside (and, Ultimately, the Profession)
Poor Management. One of the greatest complaints nurses have is the lack of support from their management team. What makes a poor manager? Some nurses may say it’s one who doesn’t value open-communication and feedback from his or her staff. Some say it’s the management team that plays favorites amongst staff or a particular shift. Yet, other nurses say it’s the manager who is not supportive of a nurse advancing her career. The list could go on forever, but one common frustration among nurses is the overall lack of support for those at the bedside. It seems to some that once nurses become managers, they “forget where they come from” and are oblivious to the struggles a bedside nurse faces on a daily basis.
Management may not even be aware of the stressors their staff encounters working the bedside. It could be that they are so wrapped up with their own job that they can’t focus on what would make life better for their staff. Or it could be that they just don’t care. Whatever the case, nurses do feel strongly about poor management.
Thompson agrees that management sometimes shows little consideration for those working at the bedside: “I feel like the night shift is ignored by management, like they have no voice.” The same sentiment echoes true for many other nurses. They feel as if management does not value them as part of the health care team—just as a docile staff that follows orders without question.
The best form of leadership follows a diplomatic approach; meaning, higher-ups actively engage their employees for input on situations that may arise. The diplomacy allows for everyone to have a voice. This type of management style encourages active participation among all employees and may dissipate some of the negative feelings some nurses feel towards their management team.
Lack of Upward Mobility. Many nurses unhappy with their chosen profession find that job mobility from the bedside is difficult without an additional degree. A nursing degree overqualifies many from other jobs outside of nursing and may not pay the equivalent of a nurse’s current salary. In order to get a job that pays as much or more than the average RN makes, additional years of school are typically required. This is a sacrifice that some may not be able to make, given that going back to school requires time away from work.
For those willing to go the extra mile and complete a higher degree in nursing, many career opportunities abound. Going back for an advanced nursing degree is the way some nurses find personal satisfaction in their career. Although not in a graduate program yet, Brittany Green, BSN, RN, a relatively new nurse of three years, plans on becoming a family nurse practitioner to influence patients in an outpatient setting and prevent some of the morbidity and mortality she sees in her current job as a cardiovascular recovery room nurse.
Green believes nurses leave because they experience burnout. “It’s not a career for everyone. It takes a special type of person to handle the emotional and physical stress that comes along with nursing,” she says. “I know I won’t be able to do bedside nursing forever; the long hours and stress will start to wear more on me.”
Underpayment. A nurse’s job can be physically and emotionally draining. Many nurses feel like they are severely underpaid for the work they do. Twelve-hour shifts can feel more like 16 when you are working the job of four people, but only getting paid for one. Nurses also sacrifice holidays, weekends, and family events because of their long and ever-changing schedule.
On the other hand, one may say a nurse’s schedule is ideal; a three-day work week schedule and having the ability to take long vacations using minimal vacation time sounds appealing to many.
But at what cost?
Nurses are notorious for picking up extra shifts on their day off because they feel like they are being paid not nearly enough for the work they do. Based on the most recent Minority Nurse annual survey results, the average RN salary in the United States is $67,980 per year. This may be considered a solid middle class income for most Americans, but nurses work very hard and feel as though it is not enough most days.
Too Many Tasks. Today’s nurse does it all; you name it, nurses do it. Administer meds? Check. Assist patients with dressing, bathing, and mobility? Check. Perform bedside procedures once done by physicians? Check. Coordinate care between all disciplines of the hospital? Check. The list is endless—and that’s the problem. Nurses are responsible for so many aspects of a patient’s care that it can become overwhelming for one person to manage during a shift.
A typical nurse works a 12-hour shift that translates into much more when the nurse is doing the job of multiple people day in and day out. Sometimes a nurse is so involved in completing everything it becomes difficult to take a much needed and deserved break during her shift. This makes for a very long day. Although the typical nurse’s schedule consists of three 12-hour shifts per week, when the days are packed with multiple tasks and responsibilities each and every day, burnout is inevitable. Studies conducted to rate nurse turnover clearly show that as a nurse’s workload increases, nurse burnout and job dissatisfaction—both precursors of voluntary turnover—also increase.
Nurses performing too many tasks typically boils down to staffing, specifically understaffing, which is also known as short staffing. When nursing units are short-staffed, nurses take on a majority of tasks done by others simply because they know how to do many other people’s jobs, but those people cannot do the job of the nurse. How many nurses have had to cover the front desk because there is not a unit secretary on duty? Or how about the nurse who is behind on her nursing duties just because she is trying to complete activities of daily living for a patient that is usually carried out by a nurse’s aide? Nurses wear the hat of many, but no one can take on the role of the nurse.
Short Staffing. A resounding number of nurses blame short staffing as the most common reason nurses leave the profession. According to a recent poll on Allnurses.com, more than one third of 1,500 nurses polled say that continuous short staffing drives nurses from the bedside and, ultimately, the profession. One of the reasons for short staffing is management cutting costs as much as possible—and what better way to do that than cut staff and work on less than is needed? Nurses are notoriously known to multitask, wearing many hats on a day-to-day basis. Management knows this and may not think it’s a problem to go without a unit secretary or nurse aide on the unit because nurses will pick up the slack. Unfortunately, this unequal distribution of work leads to many unhappy nurses who burn out quickly when doing the job of many people.
Employers can ease the burden on nurses by mandating nurse-patient ratios. Since 2004, California has mandated patient ratios of 1:5 for nurses working in hospital settings. Studies have shown the benefit of such staffing ratios. The Aiken study demonstrated that nurses with California-mandated ratios have less burnout and job dissatisfaction, and the nurses reported consistently better quality of care, leading to decreased turnover.
Decreasing patient-nurse ratios has more benefits than disadvantages that could benefit US hospital systems. The Aiken study followed nurses in three states: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and California—with California being the only state with mandated nurse-to-patient ratios. Over 22,000 RNs were surveyed, and researchers found:
• RNs in California have more time to spend with patients, and more California hospitals have enough nurses to provide quality patient care;
• In California hospitals with better compliance with the ratios, RNs cite fewer complaints from patients and families;
• Fewer RNs in California miss changes in patient conditions because of their decreased workload than RNs in New Jersey or Pennsylvania;
• If California’s 1:5 ratios on surgical units were matched, New Jersey hospitals would have 14% fewer patient deaths and Pennsylvania hospitals would have 11% fewer deaths;
• Nurses in California are far more likely to stay at the bedside and less likely to report burnout than nurses in New Jersey or Pennsylvania.
Maybe other states should follow California’s lead and mandate nurse-patient staffing ratios. What will it take to get the message across to industry leaders and make a change in how staffing levels are managed across the United States?
To Stay or Go?
The nursing profession isn’t completely lost on Thompson. She still works occasionally at the bedside on an intermediate care unit simply because of the one-on-one interaction she has with her patients. Many nurses reflect that they love nursing and enjoy spending time with their patients—something that is becoming more and more difficult with everything nurses are expected to do in this day and age.
The decision to leave the bedside affects not only the nurse contemplating such a transition but also the facility and patients who may be taken care of in a facility that is short-staffed. Replacing a nurse is costly. The RN Work Project cites the average cost to replace an RN who leaves the bedside ranges from $10,098 to $88,000 per nurse. What’s more astonishing is total RN turnover costs range from approximately $5.9 million to $6.4 million per year at an acute care hospital with more than 600 beds.
There are nurses who love their career and wouldn’t ever think of leaving. Kim Hatter, MSN, RN, is one of them. Drawn to the profession because of her mother, she was inspired by her compassion at an early age: “[My mother] was actually one of the first African Americans to graduate from Southern Arkansas University as a registered nurse.”
When questioned whether or not she had plans on leaving the profession, Hatter says no. “I’ve never thought of leaving the nursing profession, but I have sought a higher level of education in nursing recently.” Like Green, Hatter is completing her goal of becoming a nurse practitioner. She recently graduated from an adult–gerontology program and will soon leave the bedside to work at an outpatient clinic.
Because the bedside can be brutal on the body, many nurses like Green and Hatter choose to pursue nursing higher education to move from the bedside instead of leaving the profession completely. “I’ve heard of a lot of nurses with back and knee injuries,” says Hatter. “Nursing is a physically taxing job and does take a toll on your body.”
What is the Answer?
Nurses face a variety of challenges in the workplace that makes their job difficult. Based on the most prevalent and distressing issues identified by nurses, what is the overall answer to keep nurses at the bedside and, ultimately, in the profession? The RN Work Project reported when RNs leave their job, most go to another health care job not necessarily in a hospital. This is great for the general community, but it leaves a gap in coverage in hospitals where most acutely ill patients go. Where does that leave patients who need care in a hospital setting?
Green doesn’t think there is any one solution to the problem. “Burnout will always be an issue in the nursing profession,” she explains. “I think one of the most important things is for nurses to feel appreciated—by employers, coworkers, physicians, and hopefully patients.”
Hatter has a different prospective on potential solutions to this monumental problem: “I think paying nurses a higher rate of pay is always an incentive to stay. I also think nurses should receive more recognition for the valuable role they play in society.” The common denominator between Hatter and Green is that they both believe the nursing profession deserves more credit than it currently receives—and maybe this is the first step in keeping nurses happy and in the profession for the long haul.
Knowing your rights and options—and even more important, how to advocate for them—can help you break through the barriers on your path to career success.
Nurse practitioner George Copeland, MSN, NP-C, NRCME, is at the top of his profession. He’s been a nurse for 25 years, has earned advanced degrees and certifications, has his own family practice in southeast Florida, and teaches part-time at a community college.
Yet achieving a successful nursing career wasn’t always easy for Copeland, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1981. Like many new RN graduates, he started off working in the traditional hospital setting. But he quickly realized that he couldn’t handle the constant pressure of shift work.
“I tried, but I cannot work in that setting,” he explains. “I can’t take that particular kind of stress. Stress is the number one trigger for people with bipolar disorder. That’s why I went back to school to become a nurse practitioner so that I could work at my own pace and at what I wanted to do.”
“The Stigma Is Real”
It’s impossible to make generalizations about nurses and nursing students who are living with mental health disabilities, because the term encompasses such a broad range of conditions—including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and more.
But this often-unrecognized population of minority nurses does have one thing in common. All too frequently, they face formidable barriers on the path to career success in nursing, from self-doubt and stigma to bias and outright discrimination in education, licensing, and employment. That’s in spite of the fact that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has been the law of the land since 1990 and will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year.
“Nurses with mental health challenges are struggling, and the stigma is real,” says Donna Maheady, EdD, ARNP, founder and president of ExceptionalNurse.com, an online resource network for nurses and students with disabilities. “Often they are very hesitant to ask for accommodations [under the ADA], or to come out in public as needing help, because of the fear of potential discrimination. They’re scared silent.”
Researcher Leslie Neal-Boylan, PhD, RN, CRRN, APRN, FNP-BC, dean of the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh College of Nursing and author of Nurses with Disabilities: Professional Issues and Job Retention, has documented ample evidence that disability-based discrimination is alive and well in the nursing profession.
“Many administrators don’t seem to understand that they’re really leaving themselves open to legal action,” she says. “The nurse develops a disability, or reveals it, and then the discrimination begins—the assumptions that these nurses can’t do the things they’re supposed to do, and that people will be uncomfortable around them.”
But even though a surprising number of nursing gatekeepers still seem to be clueless about their obligations under antidiscrimination laws, that doesn’t mean you have to be. If you’re a nurse or student with a mental health disability, your most effective success strategy is to actively be your own best advocate.
“It’s very important for nurses with any kind of disability to know their rights going in, rather than feeling vulnerable and being afraid to make waves,” says Karen McCulloh, BS, RN, co-founder and co-director of the National Organization of Nurses with Disabilities (NOND). “But not all of them do, and not all of them are good self-advocates.”
Do’s and Don’ts of Disclosure
Because chronic mental health conditions are “invisible disabilities,” your biggest self-advocacy decision is whether or not to disclose your disability to potential or current employers, says Robin Jones, MPA, COTA/L, ROH, project director and principal investigator for the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Lakes Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center and an instructor in the university’s Department on Disability and Human Development.
First, be aware of what the law says about your disclosure rights. According to the Boston University Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, a research and service organization dedicated to improving the lives of people with psychiatric disabilities, “Under the ADA, a person with a disability can choose to disclose at any time, and is not required to disclose at all unless s/he wants to request an accommodation or wants other protection under the law.”
The pros and cons of the decision to disclose must be weighed very carefully, because disclosure can be a double-edged sword. If you know that you’ll need the employer to provide accommodations that will help level the playing field for you, then you must disclose. But the unfortunate reality is that bringing your “hidden” disability out into the open may result in discrimination.
If you decide that the benefits outweigh the risks, then when, what, and how much should you disclose?
“The general consensus is to disclose as little as possible. Disclose only as much as you need to get the support you need,” Maheady advises. “If you’re talking with your co-workers, you don’t have to go into every detail of how long you’ve been in therapy and what meds you’re on. That kind of information should be shared only with the designated people in the organization whom you’d request accommodations from, such as the human resources or equal employment opportunity departments.”
It’s also important to know that you don’t necessarily have to make your disclosure immediately. “The whole issue of when to disclose is totally based on when you believe you need to ask for an accommodation,” says Jones. “You have no obligation to disclose until that time.”
Adds McCulloh, “Sometimes when you start a job, you don’t think you’re going to need an accommodation, but you may end up needing one after all. So if you need to disclose later, you can. I know that some employers are not pleased about that. But you do have the right to do that.”
Still, many experts recommend that it’s usually better to tell the employer up front. This not only establishes your legal rights from day one but also increases your chances for success by enabling you to receive accommodations right from the start. Furthermore, if you don’t disclose but later experience problems on the job as a result of your condition, such as a bad performance review, employers are less likely to be sympathetic—and the ADA may not protect you—if you suddenly pick that time to reveal that you have a psychiatric disability.
Early disclosure makes good sense for nursing students, too. “From my standpoint as an instructor, I would say the earlier the better, so that I can make accommodations for that student at my end,” says Patricia Giannelli, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, PMHCNS-BC, ACNS-BC, assistant professor at Quinnipiac University School of Nursing in North Haven, Connecticut. “In our program, we always encourage students with disabilities to let us know as soon as possible, because we want them to succeed and to have all the tools they need.”
Know the Law(s)
Knowledge is power. That’s why another key self-advocacy strategy is to make sure you’re thoroughly knowledgeable about all the various disability rights laws that apply to you. You may find that you’re protected by more laws than you thought.
At the federal level, nurses who work at, or are applying for jobs at, private health care facilities with 15 or more employees are covered by Titles I and III of the ADA. If you’re a nursing student, or a nurse who works for a governmental or federally funded employer, such as a VA hospital, you’re covered under Title II of the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
Both laws protect people with disabilities from discrimination and entitle them to receive “reasonable accommodations” that will help ensure that they can perform the essential functions of the job or education program. For example, says Copeland, “When I was in nursing school, I had problems with not being able to concentrate. So I went to the Office of Students with Disabilities and asked for a quiet place to take exams, and extra time to take them. They gave that to me and they also gave me free counseling.”
Next, you need to be well-informed about what kinds of accommodation options you have the right to ask for. The federal Job Accommodation Network’s 2013 report, Accommodation and Compliance Series—Nurses with Disabilities, provides some examples of reasonable workplace adjustments a nurse with a mental health disability could request, including:
• Reduced distractions in the work environment, such as a quiet place to chart;
• Being able to take breaks or time off to see your therapist, talk to your therapist on the phone, or give yourself some downtime to relieve stress;
• More flexible scheduling, such as being able to work a shorter shift or one that’s less demanding and stressful;
• Modifications in the way you’re managed, such as having your supervisor provide to-do lists, written rather than verbal instructions (or vice versa), reminders about upcoming deadlines, and more frequent feedback about your performance.
In addition, the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 clarifies and expands the definition of “disability” in a way that’s especially beneficial for people living with chronic mental health conditions. The Amendments stipulate that “an impairment that is episodic or in remission is a disability if it would substantially limit a major life activity when active.”
In other words, Jones explains, “You don’t have to always be exhibiting the limitations of your mental health disability to be covered under the ADA. For example, a nurse may be doing fine without any accommodations but then suddenly starts having problems as a result of switching to a new medication. That’s an episodic situation in which the nurse would be entitled to receive a temporary, short-term accommodation.”
Federal protection for working nurses doesn’t end with the ADA. “Many nurses with disabilities don’t know that they can, for instance, take time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act if they need to leave work to go to a medical appointment [or if they need to be hospitalized],” Neal-Boylan says.
And don’t forget about state and local equal opportunity laws. “Many state laws provide greater protection for people with disabilities than the federal laws do,” Jones points out. “For example, if you live in California, you would be much better off pursuing an employment discrimination claim under your state’s civil rights laws than you would under the ADA. It’s just a stronger law.”
Should You File a Complaint?
Being fully aware of your rights as a nurse or student with a mental health disability also means understanding what action you can take if those rights are violated. In cases of obvious discrimination, such as being denied accommodations that would clearly not be an unreasonable burden for the employer or school, or being pushed out of your job or nursing program after disclosing your disability, knowing how to stand up for yourself becomes more important than ever.
Filing a discrimination complaint isn’t your only recourse—and it definitely shouldn’t be your first choice. “Try to see if you can get some resolution as close to the fire as possible,” says Maheady. “Is there a leader in the organization whom you can talk with to try to deal with the problem in a more effective way? Could you get a transfer to another unit? You need to explore every possibility for working it out internally.”
But if you’ve exhausted all of your internal resources without getting results, it’s crucial to do your homework about how the complaint process works.
Nursing students should start by reviewing their school’s grievance procedures. If going through the grievance process doesn’t end the discrimination, you can file a formal complaint against the school through the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). To find your nearest state or regional OCR, and learn more about how to pursue a complaint, visit www2.ed.gov/ocr. Students also have the option of suing the school directly rather than working with OCR.
Employment discrimination complaints are usually handled by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Unlike students, working nurses are required by law to file a complaint with the EEOC first before they can take their employer to court. EEOC complaints must be filed within 180 days of the date the discrimination occurred.
After the EEOC reviews your complaint, one of two things can happen. “The EEOC may decide that they will pursue your case against the employer,” says Jones. “Or they can issue a ‘Notice of Right-to-Sue’ letter, which gives you the right to go into the federal court system on your own and pursue the complaint with a private attorney.”
But before you decide to make such a drastic move, sit down and do some soul-searching about this question: Is it worth it?
“Be careful what you wish for,” Maheady cautions. “You have to ask yourself: Is this the hill you want to die on? If you lawyer up, do you think you’re going to be welcomed in that hospital? I’m not saying that suing your employer is never warranted. But I always advise nurses with disabilities to take that step very, very carefully.”
McCulloh agrees. “It’s not an easy process,” she emphasizes. “The right to sue still means that you need to have the financial resources to hire a lawyer, file a case, and take it to court. And it’s not a quick fix. Going through the legal process takes a very long time, which could put you in a situation where you’re not working, and not earning any income, for that entire period.”
Empower Yourself for Success
Ultimately, the most empowering pathway for nurses and students with mental health disabilities is to find positive alternatives that will let you create the best possible working or learning environment for your needs—one that will minimize your triggers and maximize your ability to succeed.
One way to do this is to connect with resource organizations that can provide advice and support—from university or employer disability services offices to peer advocacy groups, such as NOND and ExceptionalNurse.com, where you can network with other nurses who have similar disabilities to learn what’s worked for them. (See “Resources” sidebar.) These support systems can also help you identify employers who are more welcoming to nurses with disabilities because they recognize the value of having a diverse, inclusive, culturally competent nursing staff.
If you can’t change your current working conditions, or if you find that your job is just too stressful even with accommodations, consider following Copeland’s example of pursuing a specialty career niche that will be a better fit for you. For instance, one nurse from the ExceptionalNurse.com community (who asked to remain anonymous) comments: “I have bipolar affective disorder and I work as a clinical documentation improvement specialist. I couldn’t handle [bedside] nursing, but I found another area where I could be successful and use my clinical knowledge.”
Copeland offers this firsthand advice: “Don’t let yourself be defined by the fact that you have a mental health condition. If your goal is to be a nurse, or to be a nurse practitioner or a DNP, don’t let other people tell you that you can’t do that because of your disability. There are so many nurses out there who have multiple disabilities, and yet they’ve proved they can do it.”
Nurses believe medical errors could be reduced if the medical devices hospitals rely on for testing, monitoring, and treating patients could seamlessly share information, according to the results of a national survey of more than 500 nurses conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of the Gary and Mary West Health Institute.
Each year, it is estimated that more than 400,000 Americans die from preventable medical errors. This not only takes an enormous emotional toll on families and friends, but also places a heavy economic burden on the nation—an estimated trillion dollars or higher. As hospitals wage a war on error, there is growing appreciation that medical devices, while individually safe and effective at improving care and saving lives, can create risks for patients and challenges for clinicians when not seamlessly connected.
According to the survey, half of these nurses said they witnessed a medical error resulting from a lack of coordination among medical devices in a hospital setting. Devices include everything from infusion pumps, ventilators, pulse oximeters, and blood pressure cuffs to electronic health records. The weighted survey was conducted online from January 7–16, 2015, and included 526 nurses (credentialed at RN or higher and with an education of BSN or higher) who work full–time in a non–school setting.
Among these nurses, three in five (60%) said medical errors could be significantly reduced if medical devices were connected and shared data with each other automatically. This problem could be addressed by the widespread adoption of open communications standards that allow for the safe and secure exchange of data.
“Nurses are the front line of patient care and have an unrivaled ability to identify and address problems at the intersection of patients and technology,” says Dr. Joseph Smith, West Health Institute’s chief medical and science officer. “The survey helps show how much of a nurse’s time could be better spent in direct care of patients and families, and how errors could be potentially avoided if medical devices, which have been so successful at improving patient care, were able to take the next step and seamlessly share critical information around the patient’s bedside.”
Medical device interoperability, the ability to safely share health information across various technologies and systems, could provide important benefits such as enhanced patient safety and better clinical outcomes at a lower cost. The West Health Institute has estimated that a system of connected devices could potentially save more than $30 billion each year by reducing redundant testing, manual data entry, and transcription errors.
According to the survey, nearly half of these nurses (46%) said an error is extremely or very likely to occur when information must be manually transcribed from one device to another.
“I have seen many instances where numbers were incorrectly transcribed or put in reverse or put in the wrong column when typed manually, which can cause errors,” said one nurse who participated in the anonymous poll.
But perhaps even more important, transcribing data “takes way too much time for the nurses to adequately care for the patient,” one nurse responded. Many of these nurses agreed, with more than two out of three (69%) saying manually transcribing data is very likely to take time away from patients who need attention.
“Nurses enter the profession because they want to care for patients, not because they are interested in programming machines,” says Patricia H. Folcarelli, RN, senior director of Patient Safety at the Silverman Institute for Health Care Quality and Safety at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “As many as 10 devices may monitor or treat a single patient in an intensive care unit. The nurse not only has to program and monitor the machines, he or she often spends a significant amount of time transcribing data by hand because the devices are not designed to share information.”
“It’s time that we free our health care workers to do what they do best and what they are most needed for, which is caring for patients,” says Smith. “Let’s not ask busy clinicians to do those things that technology can automate easily and effectively. Medical device interoperability can save lives, time, and money, and at the same time allow nurses to focus on caring for patients.”
ABOUT THE WEST HEALTH INSTITUTE
The Gary and Mary West Health Institute is an independent, nonprofit medical research organization that works with health care providers and research institutions to create new, more cost–effective ways of delivering high–quality care. For more information, visit www.westhealth.org.
