🔒Here’s how the healthcare industry is addressing its workforce shortage crisis

Connecticut’s healthcare workforce shortage — especially in nursing — remains in a crisis stage due to a variety of factors, including the lasting effects of working during the pandemic, nurses aging into retirement, compensation issues, and a shortage of college faculty to train the next generation.

The latest example of how bad the situation has become: Stafford’s Johnson Memorial Hospital announced in mid-June that it had to temporarily halt inpatient and outpatient surgeries due to a staffing shortage.

Several Connecticut healthcare leaders recently took part in a panel discussion in Hartford, to discuss the challenges, impact and solutions to the workforce shortage.

Registered nurse Mandy Richards, who is Hartford HealthCare’s executive vice president and chief nursing officer, said about 1.2 million new registered nurses are needed nationally to address the current shortage.

Meantime, 39% of nurses nationwide between the ages of 20 to 39 report their commitment to the profession decreased due to the pandemic, which led to some nurses and other care providers leaving the industry or retiring early, Richards said, citing an industry study. The pandemic also led to stress, burnout and post traumatic stress disorder for healthcare workers, she said.

Those statistics mirror what is happening in Connecticut, Richards added.

While there has long been a healthcare workforce shortage, the pandemic exacerbated the issue, Richards and others said.

“COVID definitely strained the commitment on the part of nurses who were asking how long they could do this for,” Richards said. “There was stress day in and day out because of COVID. You can rally people once or twice for 2½ years, but it’s a marathon now and you get tired after a marathon.”

Pay to stay

Marcia Proto, executive director of the Connecticut League for Nursing and Connecticut Center for Nursing Workforce, said the state’s healthcare workforce shortage “is the worst we’ve ever seen.”

Proto said the issue predates COVID. She remembers calling for a summit in 2007 to try and address it.

“Nothing was done,” she said. “I’m disappointed because we’ve had so many opportunities the past 15 years to make substantial foundational changes, but we never did.”

Proto said she does see hope and optimism in the $46 million approved by the state legislature this year to address the dire nursing shortage. The funding earmarks $35 million over four years for nursing education and workforce development, and $11 million for loan forgiveness and tuition assistance for those in the healthcare field.

“This is our one bite of the apple to do it right,” Proto said. “If we don’t, then shame on us.”

Paul Kidwell, senior vice president for policy at the Connecticut Hospital Association (CHA), said that while “the budget funding will make a difference” it will not solve the entire problem.

Connecticut’s healthcare workforce is the largest labor sector in the state, accounting for 16% (or 270,000) of all jobs, according to the CHA. In addition, the CHA said that more than half of Connecticut’s nursing workforce is over 50 years old.

To develop a stronger pipeline, there needs to be a commitment to pay nurses more and provide them with mentors, among other steps that need to be taken, Kidwell said.

“First, you need to make sure that as nurses come into the workforce, they are supported in the workforce,” Kidwell said. “That support needs to come from senior nurses with experience in all clinical disciplines. Those new nurses also need to be made aware of internal advancement opportunities, and pay is a big issue.”

Nurse salaries vary in Connecticut based on specialties and education, but, on average, the starting entry-level pay is about $75,000, Kidwell said.

Another major component of the nursing shortage is the lack of faculty to teach nursing students.

According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, in 2020 more than 80,000 qualified nursing school applicants nationally were turned away from bachelor’s and graduate degree programs due to the lack of qualified faculty, clinical study sites, classroom space, and budget constraints.

Connecticut graduates about 1,900 nurses annually, but there is limited classroom capacity and nursing schools turn away potential candidates, according to the CHA.

The transition from nurse to an academic position in Connecticut usually comes with a pay cut that many people are not willing to take, according to Lisa Rebeschi, a registered nurse for three decades and associate dean and professor at the Quinnipiac University School of Nursing.

Nursing educators simply need to be paid more, she said.

“Unless we address some of these faculty pipeline issues, the bottleneck will remain,” Rebeschi said.

Peer network support

Every hospital and health entity has their own strategies to deal with the healthcare workforce shortage.

Richards said HHC — the state’s second-largest system and parent of Hartford Hospital — is working to address the crisis head-on.

Among other things, Richards said that because of the lack of faculty at nursing schools, HHC is working closely to create new partnerships to get nursing students into their facilities for training. There are about 6,000 nurses in the HHC system.

Hartford HealthCare in January announced it would spend $5 million over the next five years on a new partnership with Quinnipiac University to address critical shortfalls in the number of nurses, doctors and other professionals needed in health care in Connecticut and beyond. After implementation, Quinnipiac students will be able to train in HHC-designed academic programs, serve clinical rotations at HHC facilities and then transition into job openings within the health system.

In addition, Richards said, HHC has a peer-support program where volunteer nurses work with their colleagues to offer advice and serve as a mentor.

“They are not there to take the role of a psychologist, but they are there to have a chat with a nurse who might be struggling and can offer a listening ear,” Richards said. “It’s a peer supporting a peer; a nurse supporting another nurse. Unless you have walked in their shoes, you do not know what they are going through. It has been so rewarding for these nurses that they can help their colleagues.”