Meet Three Nursing Innovators Finding Ways to Combat the Nursing Shortage

Many factors contribute to the nursing shortage, including high levels of nurse turnover and burnout, an aging nursing workforce, lack of clinical sites, and the nurse faculty shortage. States, nursing schools, hospitals, and now, individuals in healthcare are coming up with varying solutions to approach each contributing factor and end the nursing shortage.

Learn about the solutions these healthcare innovators created. Find out how you can support their efforts and reduce the contributing factors of the nursing shortage in your own workplace.

The COVID-19 pandemic worsened the issue and brought attention to the unsafe conditions nurses work in when their workplace is understaffed. Now states, hospitals, nursing schools, and individuals in healthcare are creating solutions to recruit and retain more nurses.

States, like Montana, California, and Arizona, are addressing the nursing shortage through funding for nursing education, recruitment, and retention. Nursing schools are also combating the nursing shortage through strategies like rolling and dual admissions, expanded clinical opportunities, and partnerships with hospitals and medical centers.

However, not all of these solutions are equally effective.

The most effective solutions for the nursing shortage focus on listening to and retaining nurses. “We have to prioritize implementing strategies that address nurse burnout to keep current nurses in practice,” says Selena Gilles, DNP, ANP-BC, CNEcl, FNYAM. “Whether that’s with strategies like standardized nurse-to-patient ratios, improving our workplace culture, or mental health services, just to name a few.”

These nursing innovators are prioritizing retention of nursing staff in several ways:

Before joining Fibroblast, Alvarez was a hospital administrator at the University of Chicago Medicine and Northwestern Medicine. He is a military veteran who earned his master’s in healthcare administration from Rush University.

Grapefruit Health connects nursing and other clinical students with healthcare organizations. They recruit, train, and supervise students on their technology platform so they can work remotely on tasks like:

This program benefits students, healthcare organizations, and licensed professionals. Students are paid to get clinical experience for their resume. Their additional clinical experience may make them more prepared to enter the workforce than students with fewer ones.

Healthcare organizations get help with their high-volume administrative or telephone outreach tasks that do not require a clinical license. They also get access to a talent pool that is familiar with their brand and client base. Also, licensed professionals get more time to practice at the top of their license.

Gilles is certified as a clinical nurse educator and in critical care nursing, and she has been an adult nurse practitioner for 13 years, specializing in neuro and pain management. Gilles is known for creating and carrying out nontraditional immersive teaching/learning innovations to address nationally identified nursing education issues that can enhance student learning/program outcomes.

Gilles is passionate about the management of acute and chronic pain and opioid overdose prevention. She is a strong community advocate with a passion for global health. She is currently working with organizations aimed to serve the underprivileged and underserved communities in Haiti, Ghana, and Nigeria.

As an associate dean, Gilles focuses on preparing nursing students to enter the workforce with less debt and more skills through the Undergraduate Interprofessional Education Scholarship. Nursing students receive full tuition, room, and board for both semesters through a seven million dollar scholarship from the Meyers Family Foundation.

Third-year nursing students learn how to:

Nursing students use the social determinants of health and the “situation-background-assessment-recommendation” tool to communicate challenges, barriers, and treatment options for their patient to the wider team. Through these discussions, nursing students learn how each team can contribute to patient care.

In the spring semester, nursing students work with pharmacy students and medical residents in faculty-led discussions on case studies. These discussions aim to create a patient-centered nursing care plan to improve patient outcomes for chronic disease management in primary care.

The Nurses Feed Their Young Movement teaches nurses and nursing leaders emotional intelligence as a skill that has the potential to break the cycles of nurse burnout, stress, incivility, and nurse bullying while improving nurse retention and patient outcomes. The program does not require participation from hospital administration.

NFTY focuses on each nurse’s emotional intelligence and professional development so they can:

Nurses can get involved and support solutions that lessen the nursing shortage in many ways. Some require less work, like supporting other nurse entrepreneurs or applying for available financial aid for nurses to help you attend or return to nursing school.

You can get started by visiting www.grapefruit.health to learn more about their work, find help for your healthcare organization, or pitch your ideas for improving their program.

Others are more involved. You could become a nurse entrepreneur and use your own expertise to create a solution that helps the nursing shortage. Consider starting your own business if you have an idea to improve the nursing shortage that:

You can also change the culture of your current workplace without involving healthcare administrators. Individual nurses can change their workplace culture one nurse at a time when they promote a zero-tolerance culture for incivility.

You can also advocate for communicating with compassion and empathy and seeing the value that other nurses with different strengths bring to the unit. These strategies could make it easier to recruit and retain both new and experienced nurses; it can also reduce stress for nurses who work on the unit.

You can join the NFTY Movement and get started using these strategies when you: