Combat Nursing Shortages with Modern Nurse Call Technology
Earlier this year, The New York Times reported on an overnight ER visit, during which overworked nurses failed to respond to a call button for 45 minutes. The story illustrates a widespread problem that is predicted to get worse. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) reports that 11 million additional nurses will be needed to fulfill coverage gaps through 2030. Left unaddressed, this could negatively impact patient satisfaction, healthcare outcomes, and lead to increased medical errors. But the latest nurse call technology can help extend the reach of our existing nursing teams. Here’s how the adoption of this technology can help with the looming nurse shortage.
The looming impact of a nursing shortage
There are simply not enough nurses to go around and the problem will worsen in the next decade. Even without the pressures of a global pandemic, our nation’s nursing pools have thinned dramatically. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the country will need more than 200,000 new nurses to enter the field through 2026 to fill gaps in coverage.
The AACN reported some contributing factors that may impact these looming shortages, including:
Nursing school enrollments are not growing quickly enough to meet the demand for nurses. Conversely, there also are restrictions on enrollments due to an insufficient number of professional staff or classroom facilities.
A high number of nurses are nearing retirement age.
Our aging baby boomer population will place unprecedented strains on our systems of care.
As a result, hospitals are struggling to staff appropriately, placing additional strains on existing nurse teams. Burnout is increasing, causing qualified, experienced nurses to consider leaving the profession. The negative impact on patient care is expected to be high.
The impact of nursing shortages on patient care
Nurses are on the front lines of patient care. Unlike doctors or other care providers, they are the constant caregivers of bed-bound patients in every hospital in America. How will the impact of a looming nursing shortage impact patient care and mortality?
The AACN lists several studies that establish a correlation between adequate RN staffing levels and safer patient care:
Medical errors
A New England Journal of Medicine survey found that 65% of the public and 53% of physicians correlate nurse shortages with an increase in medical mistakes.
Patient mortality
One study showed for every 10% increase in the number of nurses on the floor who hold a bachelor of science degree in nursing (BSN), patient mortality decreased by 4%. Another study validated these findings with acute care patients, stating that even a 10% increase in BSNs correlated with nine fewer deaths for every 1,000 patients discharged.
Higher readmissions
Hospitals are increasingly held accountable for patient readmissions. Nursing education has a significant impact on patient care after discharge. A recent study showed that nurse staffing levels heavily impact the delivery of patient and family education. However, this important part of aftercare is often neglected when there aren’t enough nurses to go around.
Lower HCAHPS scores
There are multiple studies showing the correlation between nursing care, patient satisfaction, HCAHPS scores, and the hospital bottom line.
In the coming years, hospitals will struggle to provide adequate patient care if something can’t be done to counteract the nursing shortage.
Improving communication at the point of care will help overburdened clinical teams. Today, the technology exists to help nursing teams work more efficiently to improve patient care.
How can new technologies help alleviate the nursing shortage?
As we write this, many hospitals are scrambling to restructure nursing workflows to accommodate staffing shortages. Although technology can’t completely fix the nursing shortage, it can help to make our existing nurse teams more efficient. Making do with the available staff means adopting new tools to streamline staffing ratios and improve clinical workflows.
Traditional nurse call platforms and analog communication tools, such as pagers, make it tougher for patients to reach care teams and for nurses to reach doctors. Alarm fatigue sets in as the overhead paging system sends nurses to the next room, the phone at the nursing station rings, and alarms from bedside telemetry and nurse call platforms beep thousands of times a day.
Intelligent digital communication tools can extend the reach of nurses by using real-time location services to connect patients immediately with nurses to triage care. Electronic health records (EHRs) can be integrated with modern nurse call and connected with bedside equipment so that false alarms can be filtered and patient requests prioritized.
From a care delivery perspective, it makes sense to integrate existing patient care platforms via a digital nursing communications platform. Having one seamless point of care coordinator can increase provider collaboration, reduce medical errors, and improve patient satisfaction.
Modern integrated patient response systems offer so much more than traditional nurse call and can help alleviate gaps in nursing coverage and communication overload. The systems can effectively alter the perception of the actual nurse-to-patient ratio by more efficiently coordinating care.
If your hospital is worried about the nursing shortage, today’s modern integrated nurse call platforms may be just what you need to prepare for the storms ahead. Contact a TRL Systems representative to schedule a demo of our platform and discuss your facility’s unique needs and challenges. We can help you prepare for the future state of healthcare delivery.
© 2020, TRL Systems, Inc.