Coping with the Growing Shortage of Nurses

As the shortage of nurses increases, U.S. hospitals are trying various strategies to improve the working conditions and morale of nurses while implementing other solutions, even the use of robots.

Many hospitals are using a robot called Pyxis Helpmate to distribute meals, medical records, medications, lab specimens, and radiology films around the hospital. Although it moves slowly, it costs less than U.S.$5 per hour. An experimental one-armed robot called Penelope is being tested at Columbia-Presbyterian Center (New York, NY, USA) to replace the nurse who hands instruments to the surgeon. The freed nurse can then focus on postoperative care.

In recent years, in many hospitals the nurse shortage resulted in high patient-to-nurse ratios, tiring long shifts, and mandatory overtime. One survey revealed that 75% of nurses felt that nursing quality had declined. Then last year a study by Dr. Linda Aiken, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Philadelphia, USA), found that surgery patients were 30% more apt to die when a hospital's patient-to-nurse ratio was eight to one than in a center with a ratio of only four to one.

Since then, many hospitals have tried to improve working conditions for nurses by ending mandatory overtime; offering a position of only nine months, with summers off; offering child care; offering bonuses and tuition payments for their college students; letting nurses bid on extra shifts; and offering a "mom shift” from nine to two to attract nurses with young children in school.




Related Links:
U. Penn School of Nursing