🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
When I had shoulder surgery earlier this year, I brought three things with me to the hospital: my phone, a phone charger, and homemade cupcakes for the entire care team working on the surgical floor. Did I hope to get better care because I brought cupcakes? Of course I did. I had no doubt the care I'd receive would be outstanding with or without cupcakes, but I also know there is data to show a correlation between happier hospital staff and improved patient outcomes. But as much as everyone loves cupcakes, they don't fix the reality we are facing in America. Caregivers have far too many reasons to feel stressed, overwhelmed, and burnt out every day they're on the job.
The truth is, I walked into the hospital that cold day in February with cupcakes because I know what it takes out of caregivers to deliver unwavering care and compassion day in and day out to every patient who walks through those doors. From conversations with my company's clinical leadership team and our customers' chief nursing officers and chief medical officers who have dedicated years of their lives to patient care, I have a heightened awareness of the toll our health care system takes on caregivers.
From the oxygen tanks, bed pans, and IV drips to the moments of providing much-needed comfort, what nurses and frontline care workers provide is so important and far too often unseen and underappreciated. They are the heart and soul of health care in this country, and we are failing to take care of them in return. While there are many important issues on Americans' minds going into the presidential election this year, solving the health care workforce crisis should be at the top of the list. It's time we put better support for caregivers on the national agenda. We should take care of the people who take care of us.
The data around nurses leaving the profession paints a clear picture of the state of emergency. The number of nurses in the workforce dropped by nearly 100,000 in 2021. By 2023, nearly a third of nurses said they were likely to leave their career, saying they were feeling more stress and less job satisfaction than during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. And this trend isn't just among nurses who have been in the profession for years; nearly 18 percent of newly licensed registered nurses quit the profession within their first year on the job citing stressful working conditions and understaffed facilities.
Much of this stress is due to staffing challenges and administrative burden, with 10-20 percent of nurses' time during a 12-hour shift spent on low-value tasks that could be automated or otherwise augmented by technology. In fact, the majority of health care leaders say their organization's clinicians could save at least 10 percent of their time a week—the equivalent of at least four hours—if operational tasks were streamlined.
Technology won't be the silver bullet to solve all of our health care workforce challenges, but we are foolish not to lean on it as much as possible knowing it can be a relatively quick and significant part of the solution. While IT, media, professional and financial services rank among the most digitalized industries, health care falls to the bottom of the list alongside hospitality, construction, and agriculture. How can we not bring the same level of innovation to health care, an essential service our country can't live without, as we have to other sectors?
We are starting to see progress when it comes to health care digitalization. Health care organizations have invested in cloud migration and establishing secure, integrated IT systems. And, with an abundance of caution and vigilance, they are vetting AI-based solutions that promise to automate low-value work and offer much-needed relief to overworked, over-burdened health care workers. All this to say, there's reason to hope that advancements in technology can help slow down and relieve some caregiver dissatisfaction and burnout. But without strong federal investment to subsidize health care's continued digitalization, progress will not be as fast as needed to heal our ailing health care workforce.
No one questions the value and selflessness of caregivers. And yet, we have let our caregivers down as a country. It's always nice to see companies offering discounts on scrubs and free coffees to nurses during National Nurses Month every May, but every month should be Nurses Month. Organizations like the DAISY Foundation provide meaningful recognition to nurses and remind us of the essential services our caregivers provide, but one organization can't solve the health care workforce crisis alone. And recognition and appreciation should also include concrete action that will lessen the burden health care workers face. During this election year, together as a country, we need to be all in on the fight to give health care professionals time back to focus on what matters most—caring for patients.
BJ Schaknowski is CEO of symplr, a technology company focused on improving health care operations. He has spent more than 20 years in leadership roles in the technology industry and was an enlisted reservist for the U.S. Marine Corp for eight years.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
