Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center, along with hospitals across the nation, is experiencing a dire nursing shortage. Healthcare workers have faced indescribable challenges and pressure over the past two years. Understandably, many of them are exhausted and overwhelmed. Our nurses have made incredible sacrifices to care for patients through not one, two, or even three . . . but four surges of the COVID-19 virus, which were accompanied by waves of nurse resignations. This has taken its toll, and we are feeling the repercussions as we have seen many nurses leave the bedside permanently.
The national nursing shortage (which began in 2012) is now expected to last until 2030. In addition to the pandemic and staff burnout, several factors are converging to create increased demand for skilled healthcare workers:
The pandemic has exacerbated the nursing shortage to dire proportions. Our nurse vacancy rate is historically 5%. Today, we are facing a 20% vacancy rate which we are addressing in the short-term through contract nurses. Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center is currently forced to spend an additional $2 million a month in contract labor to ensure patients receive the same quality of care. While these extraordinary steps and expenditures are necessary to ensure excellent patient care, the situation is not sustainable. To address the crisis-level nursing shortage, we must hire, train, and retain hundreds of new graduate nurses over the next two years to fill the vacancies and re-build a strong healthcare workforce.
BSWH is prepared with a strategic “snap-back” plan to accelerate and scale-up the Graduate Nurse Residency Program. To ramp up GN recruitment, the former Chief Nursing Officer of Baylor Scott & White Medical Center - Waxahachie has returned from retirement to lead these efforts. The systemwide goal is to increase the number of graduate nurse residents from 500 in a typical pre-COVID year, to three cohorts of 750 individuals this year – a total of 2,250 graduate nurse residents. With this aggressive plan, we anticipate we will have our nursing workforce rebuilt by 2024. Locally, Baylor Scott & White – Fort Worth trains approximately 50 GNs each year. This year, that number will increase to 180, a nearly four-fold increase, at an increased annual cost of $1.5 million.
Graduate nurses coming out of nursing school with a breadth of knowledge but little to no clinical experience, requiring intensive training to prepare them to provide treatment to patients. The Graduate Nurse Residency Program provides a formal framework for GNs to transition from students to professional nurses through onboarding, clinical immersion, competency validation and seminars. This program is accredited by the American Nurses Credentialing Center and is a recognized apprenticeship program by the Department of Labor.
Completed by all new GNs, this program ensures quality, patient safety, job satisfaction and reduces turnover rates. These factors have always been important, but considering the current shortage, this program is also critical to help rebuild the healthcare workforce.
Our accredited nurse program has established infrastructure and leadership, but additional funds are needed to expand the capacity of the program. We need more educators to come alongside the graduate nurse residents and train them in a variety of skills and specialties. Additionally, extensive classroom time for nursing education will be required for each GN we hire, averaging nearly $11,200 for each new nurse. An investment in the Graduate Nurse Residency Program will help: 1) alleviate the nursing shortage in Texas, 2) close the gap in the current Baylor Scott and White nurse vacancies, and 2) ensure new nursing graduates have the best chance of long and productive careers.
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