Nurse Turnover Rate Post-Pandemic and the Effect on Patient Care

Nurse Turnover Rate Post-Pandemic and the Effect on Patient Care

Introduction

The topic of the group is “Nurse Turnover rate post-pandemic and the effect on patient care.” Nurses are among the frontline health workers who have helped in managing patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccination has helped to deal with the pandemic, but some effects, such as the nurse turnover rate, have increased. Some factors, such as nurse burnout and psychological impact due to high death rates during the pandemic, have contributed to high nurse turnover rates. Lack of motivation and appreciation after dealing with patients after the pandemic has also increased the turnover rate among patients. The group will, therefore, focus on the turnover rate of nurses during the post-COVID pandemic and the effect of the turnover rate on patients. Possible causes of the turnover rate will be addressed, and possible solutions to improve the quality of care.

Clinical Question

The COVID-19 pandemic had a lot of negative impacts on the world population due to increased mortality and morbidity rates. Nurses were the most essential frontline workers during the pandemic, caring for COVID-19 patients and implementing interventions such as patient education (Nashwan et al., 2021). The development of vaccines and implementation of various measures, such as social distance, helped in managing the pandemic. However, the problem of the turnover rate among nurses increased after the pandemic (Nashwan et al., 2021). The increased turnover rate has negative effects on the healthcare sector since it reduces the quality of healthcare services.

Understanding the increased turnover rate among nurses after the COVID-19 pandemic will help in establishing the causes of turnover rate and the negative effects of turnover (Xu, Intrator & Bowblis, 2020). Despite people having been vaccinated, nurses are required to teach patients about the importance of vaccination, the expected impact, and how to prevent reoccurrence or readmissions (Nashwan et al., 2021). They are, therefore important to ensure quality care in healthcare. Nursing interventions such as nursing education increase vaccine uptake in the right way, which helps reduce the spread of COVID-19. Nurses who manage Covid-19 patients also have experience, knowledge, and skills in managing the condition, which can be shared with other nurses to improve the quality of care. Therefore, the nurse should not leave work but help to manage patients and improve the skills and knowledge of junior nurses.

The PICOT question to support the topic is: Among post-pandemic nurses (P), does the implementation of resilience-promoting interventions (I) compared to the prior implementation of resilience-promoting interventions (C) reduce nurse turnover rate (O) as well as improve the quality of care or patient outcomes over a period of six months (T)? Factors such as burnout due to excess work, compassion fatigue, lack of motivation, and psychological issues increased the turnover rate of nurses (Labrague & de los Santos, 2021). The purpose of this paper is to identify the causes of the nurse turnover rate post-pandemic, the effects, and give the best solutions to the causes. The paper will, therefore, help increase or maintain the number of nurses in healthcare facilities and improve the quality of healthcare services. The information from the paper can be used by the government and healthcare organizations to reduce the nurse turnover rate hence maintaining enough nursing staff to improve the quality of services offered to patients and also improve the skills and knowledge of junior nurses. Addressing the problem will also reduce the cost of healthcare to patients by reducing readmissions and reoccurrence of diseases (Labrague & de los Santos, 2021). Healthcare organizations will also reduce their costs, such as the cost of hiring new nurses.

Levels of Evidence

The clinical question, in this case, is asking if certain strategies reduce the turnover rate, reduce the cost of healthcare, and improve the quality of care for patients. Therefore, the clinical question is an economic or decision analysis question. A decision or economic analysis question in research occurs when the interventions or treatments improve the quality of life or lower the cost of healthcare either to the patient or the healthcare organization. Therefore, the best research design that will help in answering the question is using both a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach. Using both qualitative and quantitative approaches will help in understanding better the causes and effects of the nurse turnover rate since both numerical and non-numerical data will be analyzed based on existing evidence and concepts (Queirós, Faria & Almeida, 2017). Qualitative methods of data collection will help understand why nurses opt to stop working and the effects of stopping to work on patients and health organizations. Quantitative methods where actual numbers will be used will help in testing theories, making predictions, and identifying turnover rate patterns. The number of nurses leaving or stopping work before implementation of the strategies and after the implementation of the strategies will be collected and recorded to represent quantitative data. Since the time period will be six months, a longitudinal study design will be used to collect data among nurses.

Search Strategy

Two search engines were used to identify the article to use for the topic in the databases. The first search engine was the university search engine, where the Chamberlain University Library database was used. The second was the Google Scholar search engine. The keywords from the topic and question used to search for the articles include Covid-19, nurses, turnover intentions, turnover rate, intentions to leave, Resilience, and turnover impact. The keywords from the topic and the PICOT question were keyed in the search engines to generate the articles, and 100 articles were generated. Filters were applied to pick the latest articles within the last five years, which narrowed to 50 articles. The articles with more keywords in the title related to the topic were selected, and 20 articles were found. It was further narrowed down to articles with the most bolded keywords in the body, where two articles were selected. The two most relevant articles identified include “Comparing the Impact of COVID-19 on Nurses’ Turnover Intentions Before and During the Pandemic in Qatar” by Nashwan et al. (2021) and “Resilience as a Mediator between Compassion Fatigue, nurses’ Workoutcomes, and quality of care during the COVID-19 pandemic” by Labrague and de los Santos (2021).

References

Labrague, L. J., & de los Santos, J. A. A. (2021). Resilience as a mediator between compassion fatigue, nurses’ work outcomes, and quality of care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Applied Nursing Research, 61, 151476.

Nashwan, A. J., Abujaber, A. A., Villar, R. C., Nazarene, A., Al-Jabry, M. M., & Fradelos, E. C. (2021). Comparing the Impact of COVID-19 on Nurses’ Turnover Intentions before and during the Pandemic in Qatar. Journal of Personalized Medicine, 11(6), 456.

Queirós, A., Faria, D., & Almeida, F. (2017). Strengths and limitations of qualitative and quantitative research methods. European Journal of Education Studies.

Xu, H., Intrator, O., & Bowblis, J. R. (2020). Shortages of staff in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic: What are the driving factors?. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 21(10), 1371-1377.