Nurses: Working conditions a major cause of exodus

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Working conditions are a major cause of nurses leaving health care, state House Democrats were told during an informational meeting May 7. 

During “National Nurses Week,” the Pennsylvania House Labor and Industry Committee invited nurses from across the state to discuss the causes of, and solutions to, the nursing workforce crisis in Pennsylvania. 

Just before the meeting, the committee approved H.B. 2247, introduced by state Rep. Leanne Krueger, D-Delaware, which would create the Healthcare Workplace Violence Prevention Act to ensure that health care workers in Pennsylvania are afforded a safe, violence free workplace where they can work and perform their duties without the fear of bodily harm or fear for their personal safety. 

During the meeting, Maureen May, RN of Temple University Hospital, told committee members that the problem is the working conditions. 

“Between unacceptable staffing levels and escalations in workplace violence, nurses are finding other things to do with their licenses or taking early retirement,” May said. “We have the nurses in PA, but they’re sitting on the sidelines. They don’t want to subject themselves to moral injury and risk their license or personal injury, so they have decided to do other things. We can get them back to the bedside – but for that to happen, the working conditions must improve.” 

Jamie Balsamo, RN at UPMC Altoona, told the committee, “I am saddened to say that, since UPMC took us over ten years ago, Altoona has become a shell of what it used to be. We’ve watched our hospital’s priorities go from a focus on patients to a focus solely on numbers.”  

Balsamo went on to say, “I’m an example of the burnout and mass exodus away from the bedside that is plaguing our health care workforce. For the past three years, I worked in the intensive care unit, which is where my passion lies. But just four months ago, I transferred out of the ICU to the cardiac catheter lab in order to avoid leaving Altoona altogether. I just couldn’t survive a minute longer in the ICU due to the working conditions, and I could no longer ethically accept the risks that my patients were facing.” 

Michelle Boyle, RN at Allegheny General Hospital, said, “When I started in nursing, I expected stressful situations. Over the past three decades, however, health care has gone from stressful to traumatizing as corporatized health care has taken over. 

Boyle said big corporations’ “relentless” push toward consolidation of market power, decimating frontline staffing, suppressing wages and excluding frontline health care workers’ voices from patient care decisions, has created traumatizing conditions for both patients and nurses. 

 “We need legislative and protective standards, like the Patient Safety Act, to hold the corporate health care systems accountable. And we need elected officials to step up to ensure that more nurses and health care workers have the ability to organize and bargain for better standards in their hospitals and nursing homes for their patients and themselves.” Boyle said. 

“For several years we have heard about a nursing shortage. That is a misnomer. Rather, there is a workforce crisis. Specifically, thousands of highly qualified and experienced clinical nurses are leaving the bedside. They leave instead of subjecting themselves to the continued overexertion and the stressful and unrealistic situations that make up today’s bedside nursing experience,” Davey Scher, RN and representative of the PA State Nurses Association, said. “If hospitals want more bedside nurses, which is what the data shows they do indeed want, then the onus is on those hospitals to ensure a safe clinical work environment to attract and recruit nurses, and to bring them back to the bedside. It truly is that simple.” 

Rep. Jason Dawkins, D-Philadelphia County, majority chair of the House Labor and Industry Committee, said, “In response to the nursing workforce crisis, there has been much focus on addressing the pipeline, but today’s testimony highlighted the importance of retaining qualified nurses at the bedside. We must take action to secure stronger labor protections and safer working conditions for our nurses and health care professionals.”