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The Crisis Caused by a Crisis and its Fix

Jessica Carter, RN

Department of Nursing, James Madison University

NSG 462 Issues in Contemporary Nursing Practice

Dr. Jill Delawder

November 6, 2022
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The Crisis Caused by a Crisis and its Fix

Nurse shortages have been happening on and off again for over a hundred years. This

causes issues with safety, staffing, availability, and expenses just to name a few. While there

have been nursing shortages in the past, Nursing shortages are not only detrimental to nurses, but

to our patients as well as hospitals and other organizations.

One of the worst shortages of nurses in America was during the mid-twentieth century

that spanned through the Great Depression and World War II. This shortage was caused due to

late responses from organizations after a surge of critical patients filled up growing hospitals

(Whelan, 2011). Similar to today, especially since Covid, they were unable or unwilling to see

the need before it was too late.

While there was a clear nursing shortage happening prior to Covid, Covid did such

significant damage that even attempts at fixing the situation made the shortage worse (Narva &

Maloney, 2022). Back in 2020, when Covid first hit America, our hospitals were overburdened

by massive amounts of patients, many of them critical. With no beds available, lack of

appropriate personal protective equipment, and overworked and stressed-out nurses – not even

including the many nurses that either quit, got sick with Covid themselves, or retired – Covid

was already bringing about unsafe conditions (Narva & Maloney, 2022).

Hospital’s temporary fix was to bring in travel nurses. Travel nurses in America – not in

terms of war – have been around since the 1970s. They were skilled nurses in their field that

would be able to start work almost right away wherever in America there was a need for

additional help. These would be temporary assignments, whether hospital’s needed extra help

cause of a prolonged situation – like natural disasters, epidemics, etc. – multiple nurses had quit

or went on strike, etc. This was perfect for hospitals as they needed working nurses immediately
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(Yang & Mason, 2022). However, with the unsafe conditions, the amount of work required, and

the need to get nurses now meant that hospitals were offering often times a year’s salary to work

thirteen weeks. This took staff nurses from other hospitals leaving them short staffed and

needing travel nurses (Hansen & Tuttas, 2022). Less applications of experienced nurses were

submitted to hospitals as they often chose to travel instead. Hospitals all over, even those away

from the city and less affected by the pandemic, were asking for travel nurses which offered

more money for often similar levels of work.

Nursing shortages got worse as hospitals relied on travel nurses who were there only on

temporary assignments, some hospitals even relied solely on travel nurses to staff a unit or shift.

Conditions started improving though. Hospitals were now restocked with personal protective

equipment. But travel nurses were still a good percentage of every hospital’s staff (Hansen &

Tuttas, 2022). The nursing shortage still continued. Seemingly worse than ever. Even though

hospitals were slowly recovering from the pandemic, some effects still remained.

Travel nurses will absolutely continue to be around as it appeals to a vast portion of

nurses. However, since Covid, a big pull for nurses to become travel nurses is not traveling, but

money (Yang & Mason, 2022). While there has always been a gap in pay between staff nurses

and travel nurses due to additional expenses and inconveniences, this large of a gap makes it

almost ridiculous to be a staff nurse. With the amount of opportunities in travel nursing and such

an increase in pay – often triple – it’s no wonder people are leaving staff nursing and getting

temporary assignments which just creates a snowball effect. If organizations want to increase

staff nurses and decrease travel nurses, I believe that ultimately, they will have to pay staff

nurses closer to the pay of travel nurses. They need to close the pay gap back to the pay gap it

had been prior to the pandemic.

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Now, almost three years after the start of Covid in America, we treat Covid very similar

to a patient with the flu. Mask mandates are only in certain places. However, we still experience

unsafe environments with increased nurse to patient ratios caused by nurse shortages and high

patient numbers. We still experience more travel nurses per unit than staff nurses. While we are

no longer in the pandemic anymore, this crisis has caused another crisis that still continues and

will continue until organizations choose to spend money differently.

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References
Buerhaus, P. (2021). Current Nursing Shortages Could Have Long-Lasting Consequences: Time to Change

Our Present Course. Nursing Economics, 247 - 250.

http://www.nursingeconomics.net/necfiles/2021/SO21/247.pdf Hansen, A., & Tuttas, C.

(2022). Professional Choice 2020-2021: Travel Nursing Turns the Tide. Nurse Leader, 145-151.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mnl.2021.12.018

Narva, A., & Maloney, K. (2022). Preparing to Make Difficult Choices: Nursing Triage Decisions and Crisis

Standards of Care during COVID-19. Nurses and COVID-19: Ethical Considerations in Pandemic

Care, 35-51. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82113-5_4

Whelan, J. C. (2011). Where Did All the Nurses Go? Retrieved from Penn Nursing:

https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/nhhc/workforce-issues/where-did-all-the-nurses-go/

Yang, Y. T., & Mason, D. (2022, January 28). COVID-19’s Impact On Nursing Shortages, The Rise Of Travel

Nurses, And Price Gouging. Health Affairs Forefront. DOI: 10.1377/forefront.20220125.695159