LAS VEGAS — American Nurse Affiliation President Jennifer Mensik Kennedy says trade pressures are coalescing to worsen nursing shortages.
Research estimate the U.S. will want 1.2 million new registered nurses by 2030 to fulfill care calls for. The ANA, American Hospital Affiliation and well being techniques have doggedly referred to as for options to the rising labor disaster for years, with some well being techniques opting to amass their personal nursing faculties to make sure enough pipelines of expertise.
Nonetheless, Kennedy says obstacles stay to educating, recruiting and retaining high quality nurses. Some issues are outdated hat — for instance, it’s tough to entice nurses to take a pay minimize to change into a nurse educator. Nonetheless, new challenges are of the cultural and political second, in accordance with Kennedy, together with creating methods to retain nurses burnt out by sufferers peddling misinformation.
“It reminds the nurses — who have been round throughout COVID — of the rise in office violence, and nurses being attacked when there have been disagreements,” Kennedy instructed Healthcare Dive on the sidelines of the HLTH 2025 convention. “It’s all this stress.”
Editor’s word: This interview has been edited for readability and brevity.
HEALTHCARE DIVE: For years, the trade has stated now we have an enormous scarcity of nurses within the U.S. and that the issue is worsening. From the ANA’s perspective, what’s the trade doing to fight the scarcity?
JENNIFER MENSIK KENNEDY: It looks as if we all the time have a scarcity. I had a scarcity after I simply began [as a nurse over 20 years ago]. Nonetheless, the explanations change. Now, the primary piece is, once we had Obamacare handed, there was a Nationwide Workforce Committee that they have been supposed to face up that they by no means stood up. That was to see, nationwide, what number of nurses do we’d like? What number of physicians do we’d like? The place do we’d like them? So we do not have a nationwide plan. States are attempting to handle this.
Then, within the Huge Lovely Invoice, they took out all the nursing training funding — all of it. And so faculties are already panicked taking a look at what they will do, as a result of you may’t simply deliver on extra college students with much less funding.
A few of that’s as a result of there’s not sufficient college at nursing applications. There was a invoice launched within the Home and Senate [last year] — it didn’t go wherever — that may have pushed for nurse college parity fee, the place we pay nurse college equal to these nurses in different settings. I assist laws like that or laws proposed this yr addressing training financing.
One eye-opening piece is that nursing training funding is thru [the Health Resources and Services Administration], and it is unstable. It is as much as administrations and the finances. Once we have a look at doctor training [funding] it is fixed. It is funded via CMS. Nursing, although we’re a lot a bigger workforce, we solely get one-fiftieth of what the physicians get for training on this nation.
The place is synthetic intelligence by way of serving to to fill a few of these workforce shortages?
The American Nurses Affiliation has totally different place papers on digital nursing and AI, however what we are saying clearly is that it’s supplemental; it doesn’t change a nurse.
After I take into consideration nursing care at this time, there is a ton of analysis on missed care from a nursing by omission, simply because there’s too many sufferers, and nurses cannot get to surveillance actions, ache reassessments, care coordination or discharge training. So about 56% of care is missed on common. Once we have a look at the actions AI can do, it may assist us with a few of these items.
However simply because it helps us does not imply nurses are going to have extra time for extra sufferers. They’re simply going to have the ability to handle the sufferers extra fully. We will see much less missed care, however we will not additionally then say, okay, you are extra environment friendly due to AI, so now you may take extra sufferers.
I used to be in a session earlier at this time the place a well being system stated, “We’re not going to spend money on agentic AI in a scientific setting except it could enable us to be extra environment friendly or cut back our staffing.” Whenever you hear an announcement like that, does it fear you?
You recognize, it does fear me, as a result of I feel the incorrect individuals are on the desk. We have to have the nurses who’re doing the care on the desk with decision-makers. We’ve not made modifications or enhancements in affected person care and that is as a result of we preserve considering expertise goes to save lots of us and that we do not want human beings.
I need to speak about what it is wish to be a nurse proper now. The federal authorities is altering vaccine pointers. Requirements for some care, like gender-affirming care, can range primarily based on the place you reside. How is that this impacting your workforce?
When you’ve gotten a special customary of care in New York and a special customary of care in Texas, it’s extremely, very laborious. And so from our perspective, now we have insurance policies on vaccines, however we had to return and replace our insurance policies to not truly reference the [Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices] and [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], as a result of we’re involved with a few of the statements they’re making.
We’re pointing to the vaccine proof that’s within the literature, which is hard as a result of now we have fragmented teams. We’ve the West Coast Alliance, the Northeast Alliance and totally different organizations offering related data, nevertheless it’s actually laborious for somebody to search out what they want.
That is sort of like again to COVID, proper? Once we have been in COVID, individuals did not need the COVID vaccine as a result of they have been like, “Effectively, I do not belief the science.” However they got here in to get handled for all the things else.
So it actually put an additional degree of burden on nurses and different suppliers to say, “Let’s speak via all of those therapies you retain listening to from your mates that aren’t proof primarily based.” Nurses need to handle individuals and make them effectively, and if sufferers are not going to take the proof recommendation, that is actually anxious, particularly once you see youngsters you already know aren’t vaccinated.
I’ve seen individuals put up [on social media] considering that they triggered their kid’s autism as a result of they took Tylenol. The disgrace that we’re placing on ladies on this nation is horrible, and so nurses are having to exit and reeducate and have conversations about what correlation versus causation is.
How do nurses climate that added pressure?
It’s robust, as a result of resilience is just not one thing it’s best to want to indicate up with each single day. However now, daily is attending to be that anxious day, and no one can climate that each single day.
And so that is growing turnover. We’ve a considerable amount of largely newer, youthful nurses who say they won’t be right here in a yr. I feel it is 36% of latest grad nurses say “I am leaving this group within the subsequent yr as a result of the stress is so nice.”
