The burnout crisis among nurses has gotten significantly worse since the peak of the pandemic in 2021, according to research released Monday by AMN Healthcare, the largest healthcare staffing company in the U.S.
The study is based on 18,226 completed surveys that AMN sourced from registered nurses across the country in January. About 12,000 of the participants included in this research were staff nurses, with the remainder being travel nurses and per diem nurses.
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Only 40% of nurses said that they have no plans to change their work status in the coming year.
But not all nurses who made up the remaining 60% are planning to leave the profession altogether. For example, 15% said they will continue working as a nurse but at a new place of employment, and 12% answered that they will switch to working as a travel nurse. Other respondents said that they plan to make different career changes — such as leaving the healthcare field, switching to part-time work or returning to school.
The reason so many nurses are making career changes stems from their dwindling job satisfaction rates, the study showed. Nurses who said that they were extremely satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their career choice totaled 71% in 2023, which is 10 percentage points lower than AMN’s 2021 survey.
The study revealed that nurse satisfaction regarding the quality of care they provide at their current job is also decreasing. Three-quarters of nurses were satisfied with their care quality in 2021, but just 64% of nurses said the same in 2023.
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Job satisfaction rates are going down because nurses feel they are too busy to spend adequate time with each of their patients, according to the report. Only one-third of nurses said they have ideal time to spend with patients, marking a decrease of 10 percentage points from 2021.
As one would imagine, nurses who are satisfied with their career are more likely to stay in their current job. On the other hand, the likelihood of nurses who are dissatisfied with their careers continuing to work at the same facility one year down the road is only 32%, according to the study.
The study also signaled that the nursing workforce shortage could persist for years to come, as nurses are becoming more hesitant to encourage young people to choose a career in the field. Only half of nurses said they are likely to encourage others to become a nurse, marking a 14- percentage point decrease from 2021.
In addition to having a major influence on nurses’ career decisions, the burnout crisis is also having an increasing effect on their mental health and physical wellbeing, the report showed.
The percentage of nurses who strongly or somewhat agreed that they often feel emotionally drained as a result of their job rose from 62% in 2021 to 77% in 2023. The percentage who worry that their job is affecting their health rose from 51% to 70%, and those who reported feeling misunderstood or underappreciated at work rose from 38% to 58%.
The nurse respondents identified five major strategies they believe would do the most to alleviate the current burnout crisis: integrating more nurse input into organizational decision making, creating a safer working environment, increasing salaries, reducing the number of patients assigned to one nurse and increasing support staff.
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