Chances are you’ve seen and read more positive portrayals of nursing in the news media since the start of the pandemic than in years past. Recall those days at the start of the pandemic when nurses and other healthcare providers were hailed as heroes, and the country was counting on nursing, as part of an overwhelmed healthcare system, to help see it through a terrifying plague.
Now, a new survey confirms that nurses feel the portrayal of nursing has become more positive. Of 1,000 nurses surveyed on behalf of healthcare staffing firm connectRN, 63% said that nurses were portrayed more positively in the media now than before the pandemic (55%).
Yet, other results of that survey highlight rather distressing views from nurses. For one thing, 85% of the surveyed nurses said they felt misunderstood by the general public. And, perhaps more disturbing, 47% said that the biggest misconception about nurses is that their job is “easy” compared to other healthcare professionals.
“There’s a big disconnect between what they feel bedside and how they think the public is perceiving them,” said connectRN CEO Ted Jeanloz in an interview. “I think a big part of it is the isolation of the last two years. Hospitals have not been a place where visitors are generally allowed. Nurses have much less interaction than they used to. I think there’s much more social isolation as a result of COVID protocols and other things that are weighing on the mental health of the field.”
What’s more, some 83% of respondents said that nurses are underrecognized for what they do as front-line workers.
“I think the survey was largely in line with what we hear every day from the nurses who choose to work with us and then elect to use our platform,” said Jeanloz. “The findings were not inconsistent with what we’ve heard from nurses who certainly feel underappreciated.” Of the nurses surveyed, over three-quarters were employed full-time. Some 63% were RNs and 37% were certified nursing assistants (CNAs).
connectRN offers a staffing app that enables nurses and other clinicians to take extra shifts in other facilities. Some 125,000 users are on the platform.
Higher pay, better staffing ratios needed
To make nursing more bearable, nurses in the survey cited higher pay (41%) and smaller nurse-to-patient ratios (23%). “Unfortunately,” said Jeanloz, “we’ve seen situations over the last six months to a year where hospitals and facilities are offsetting higher pay with higher ratios. So the hospital bottom line is coming through okay, but the nursing job is actually getting even harder than it already was. And that’s been a real source of frustration for a lot of our nurses.”
The need for actions to be taken to make the profession more bearable and more attractive is supported by recent nursing employment figures. An analysis of nurse employment in Health Affairs published in January 2022 found that growth in the RN workforce plateaued during the first 15 months of the COVID pandemic.
New data, according to Health Affairs Forefront, covering the entirety of 2021, showed the total supply of RNs decreased by more than 100,000 in one year. The authors say that is a far greater drop than observed over the past four decades. Of even greater alarm, the decrease stemmed not as much from RNs older than age 50 but rather primarily from younger RNs, the authors say.
Still rewarding
On a bright note, 66% of the respondents described their career as rewarding; 41% said it was joyful. Almost three-quarters (79%) said that the healthcare workers they work with daily often make them feel supported and 40% said they feel the most appreciation from their patients.
By and large, notes Jeanloz, nurses love nursing. Paradoxically, that can lead to a problem of its own. “We put incredible demands on people because we know they love what they do. And as a society we take advantage of that. And this is a moment where it doesn’t surprise me at all that nurses say they love what they do. We’ve known that for a long time. The question is, how can we love them back and how can we give them what they deserve in that model?”
Now a freelance writer and editor, he served as a Director at Elsevier, where he was instrumental in the development of major online nursing reference and procedure products. Previously, he served as Editorial Director at Nurses.com, one of the first nursing websites, and was Executive Editor at Nursing magazine, a premier large-circulation journal.
Today, he continues to serve nurses and other clinicians by reporting on developments and trends in healthcare with meaning, context, and insight.
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