Innovations in Nursing Workforce Management: Integrating Emerging Technologies With Proven Strategies.

Addressing the current and future nursing workforce shortage is the most pressing topic on healthcare leaders' agenda. The pandemic worsened a looming problem, driven both by supply and demand. Classic strategies deployed in past shortages are useful but are not sufficient to guide scarce resource management in the future. Emerging innovative technology solutions, carefully selected and evaluated, can supplement and enhance past strategies.

The Continuing Saga of Nurse Staffing: Historical and Emerging Challenges.

Registered nurses are the backbone of America's health systems, providing care and support to patients across the lifespan. Appropriate nurse staffing is critical to ensure safe and effective care for patients. Nurse staffing is a complex topic; nurse administrators find themselves facing escalating challenges to meet staffing needs. These challenges can be attributed to a variety of factors, both historical and new. This article examines the current factors contributing to nursing shortages, nurse staffing challenges, and the implications of inappropriate staffing on both financial and patient outcomes.

Caregiver Fatigue: Implications for Patient and Staff Safety, Part 1.

OBJECTIVE: This article describes the profound impact of fatigue and the process by which 1 academic medical center assessed fatigue levels, and associated factors, among nursing personnel in their effort to develop a comprehensive fatigue management program. BACKGROUND: To adequately perform amid high patient acuity and in today's fast paced healthcare environment, nurses must be attentive and react quickly and appropriately with clear judgment and reasoning-abilities that can be greatly impaired by fatigue. Nursing leaders are instrumental in systematically addressing work-related fatigue and implementing processes designed to prevent fatigue and overwork; however, baseline measures are necessary if the efficacy of these initiatives is to be assessed. METHODS: The 15-item Occupational Fatigue Exhaustion/Recovery scale was used to assess current fatigue levels among nursing staff at a university medical center. Demographic and schedule-related questions were used to examine the characteristics of the population and identify any associated factors. RESULTS: Work-related fatigue is prevalent among all nursing staff, but differences were noted based on the respondent's position, age, and typical work shift. CONCLUSIONS: Nursing administrators and shared governance councils can address the factors contributing to work-related fatigue and negatively impacting nursing personnel's ability to rest and recuperate. Nurse leader involvement is needed to develop comprehensive fatigue reduction strategies.

Caregiver Fatigue: Implications for Patient and Staff Safety, Part 2.

Fatigue negatively affects healthcare workers' health and well-being, decreases patient safety, and negatively impacts the work environment. Although individual lifestyle choices influence fatigue levels, much responsibility lies with nursing administrators to prevent situations that may result in sleep deprivation or overwork. This article, the 2nd in a 2-part series, describes the results that were achieved from a fatigue reduction intervention.

The Importance of the Partner: Supporting Nurse Leaders' Journey to Executive Roles.

Having a fully committed partner is an asset some nurse executives celebrate. The life partner can play a critical role in the nurse executive's career from a personal perspective. The importance of being flexible and balancing "who does what" and how to manage through life's challenges is reported through three nurse executives' stories and one spouse. Having a partner enriches the life journey, according to these leaders.

Excellence and evidence in staffing: a data-driven model for excellence in staffing (2nd edition).

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, 2010) and the Institute of Medicine's (IOM, 2011) Future of Nursing report have prompted changes in the U.S. health care system. This has also stimulated a new direction of thinking for the profession of nursing. New payment and priority structures, where value is placed ahead of volume in care, will start to define our health system in new and unknown ways for years. One thing we all know for sure: we cannot afford the same inefficient models and systems of care of yesterday any longer. The Data-Driven Model for Excellence in Staffing was created as the organizing framework to lead the development of best practices for nurse staffing across the continuum through research and innovation. Regardless of the setting, nurses must integrate multiple concepts with the value of professional nursing to create new care and staffing models. Traditional models demonstrate that nurses are a commodity. If the profession is to make any significant changes in nurse staffing, it is through the articulation of the value of our professional practice within the overall health care environment. This position paper is organized around the concepts from the Data-Driven Model for Excellence in Staffing. The main concepts are: Core Concept 1: Users and Patients of Health Care, Core Concept 2: Providers of Health Care, Core Concept 3: Environment of Care, Core Concept 4: Delivery of Care, Core Concept 5: Quality, Safety, and Outcomes of Care. This position paper provides a comprehensive view of those concepts and components, why those concepts and components are important in this new era of nurse staffing, and a 3-year challenge that will push the nursing profession forward in all settings across the care continuum. There are decades of research supporting various changes to nurse staffing. Yet little has been done to move that research into practice and operations. While the primary goal of this position paper is to generate research and innovative thinking about nurse staffing across all health care settings, a second goal is to stimulate additional publications. This includes a goal of at least 20 articles in Nursing Economic$ on best practices in staffing and care models from across the continuum over the next 3 years.

Framework for patient safety, part 1: culture as an imperative.

Nurse leaders play a critical role in patient safety. They are essential in building a culture of safety and engineering resilience into workflows and patient care processes enabling healthcare organizations to progress toward high reliability. In part 1 of this 2-part series, the authors discuss the critical nature of a safety culture: why trust and respect lead to teamwork and collaboration in preventing serious safety events. Part 2 will introduce the emerging healthcare concept of high reliability, described through examples of health systems that have successfully adapted models from other industries. Use of technology and other advancements provides a context for advancing patient safety. Aligning culture and engineering technology for safety, when coupled with effective leadership, can provide a long-term approach for safe and effective care.

A framework for patient safety, part 2: resilience, the next frontier.

Last month in Part 1, the authors discussed the critical aspects associated with building a safety culture and holding staff and leadership accountable through measurement and expected performance. Sustaining a safety culture begins with the human aspects but must reach beyond the underlying systems and processes, which enable resilience and error prevention in today's complex healthcare environment.

Leading tomorrow's healthcare organizations: strategies and tactics for effective succession planning.

Hospitals and health systems today are challenged by the lack of consistent workforce planning which has resulted in a significant dearth of effective succession planning strategies and tactics for the executive suite as well as middle management. This article discusses how the healthcare industry lags behind other corporate organizations in creating a succession plan and in retaining top leadership talent. It also provides practical approaches for succession planning in healthcare and identifies the key elements of succession planning for the chief executive officer and other senior leaders.