Although hospitalizations due to COVID-19 have settled far below previous peaks, the pandemic’s ripple effects on the health care workforce continue to strain capacity at many teaching hospitals. Among the direst shortages is that of nursing staff.
For example, at Ochsner Health, which runs 47 hospitals in the Gulf Coast region and is headquartered in New Orleans, a current shortage of 1,200 nurses has forced the system to close inpatient beds, resulting in patients waiting in already-strained emergency departments.
“In the Gulf Coast … what we’ve experienced is not different than what the rest of the nation has experienced, in that we’ve seen many nurses leave the workforce, either for early retirement or for other personal reasons,” says Leonardo Seoane, MD, executive vice president and chief academic officer of Ochsner Health. “We’ve had an increased turnover of nurses, and in our allied health areas too, which has created a significant crisis — and I think crisis is the appropriate word — in our ability to provide as much care as we would like to.”
Although there was a nursing shortage before 2020 fueled by many nurses approaching retirement, aging patient populations needing more medical care, and increasing burnout, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the problem, as many nurses who were working at patient bedsides in hospitals left nursing due to overwork and moral distress.