Half of Washington’s healthcare workers are likely to quit, poll shows

A hospital staffing crisis in Washington could push the state’s healthcare infrastructure to the brink without adopting safe staffing standards to help reduce burnout and improve workplace safety, according to a new survey by the WA Safe + Healthy Coalition.

In a survey of about 75,000 healthcare professionals in Washington, 49% said they are “likely to leave the healthcare profession in the next few years.” Among those who said they were likely to leave, 68% cited lack of staff as one of the main reasons.

In addition, a staggering 79% of healthcare professionals said they were burnt out and nearly half (45%) said they felt unsafe in their healthcare jobs.

WHAT IMPACT

For the second year, burnt-out and overworked healthcare workers have been asking Washington lawmakers to step in and pass the safe workforce standards proposed this year in Senate Bill 5236.

The legislature will set the ratio of nurses to patients by requiring a limit on the number of patients a nurse in a hospital can care for at any given time.

Other states and organizations are also calling for nursing ratios.

According to NurseJournal, California and Massachusetts have nurse-to-patient ratio laws in place in hospitals, and other states are considering legislation.

LeadingAge sent a letter to the leadership of the Congress urging them to consider the issue of staffing nursing homes.

According to the coalition poll, safe staffing standards will protect any healthcare professional from prescribing too many patients at the same time and ensure that hospital managers hire enough staff to keep workers and patients safe. Reducing burnout and providing safer working conditions will help solve the workforce crisis, healthcare professionals say.

Surprisingly, many of those surveyed said the crisis was primarily caused by a shortage of medical workers, according to hospital leaders. Rather, they say, it is due to mismanagement and poor working conditions.

Data from the Washington Department of Health shows that about 16,000 nurses with valid licenses in Washington are not currently working in nursing. While WA Safe + Healthy coalition partners support increased investment in workforce development, as hospitals are calling for, executives’ claims that hiring more workers will solve the talent crisis is a red herring, pollsters say.

“Healthcare workers are leaving hospital beds at an alarming rate because of unmanaged and insecure staffing conditions, not because they have changed their mind about working in healthcare,” said Erin Ellison, an emergency nurse at St. Joseph Bellingham.

BIG TREND

In the “Nursing Salary Survey Report” released last year, 29% of nurses said they were considering leaving the profession, a sharp increase from the 11% who considered such a move in the 2020 survey.

Higher salaries and dissatisfaction with management were also key reasons for changing nurses’ working conditions in 2020 or 2021, with 28% saying they changed settings. The percentage of nurses considering changing employers increased to 17% in 2021 from 11% in 2020, while the percentage of nurses who are passively looking for a job – not actively looking for a new job but open to new opportunities – also increased from 38% in 2020 to 47% in the latest survey.

Twitter: @JELagasse
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