How did we get to the nursing shortage we are at today? Surprisingly, it wasn’t due to COVID-19, but the pandemic certainly didn’t help.
“We will be perfect in every aspect of the game. You drop a pass, you run a mile. You miss a blocking assignment, you run a mile. You fumble the football, and I will break my foot off in your John Brown hind parts and then you will run a mile. Perfection. Let's go to work.” — Coach Herman Boone, Remember the Titans. What if the public healthcare consumer had the same expectations of us as Coach Herman Boone did of his football players? Would they be wrong?
In my new job, I get to see what healthcare heroes are doing at the frontline. I get to see the staffing challenges that nurses are enduring- what used to be the unthinkable is now the norm. The administrators get it, they aren’t disconnected, and they’re desperately trying to help. Nurses today are taking care of twice the number of patients they had previously cared for, and they’re literally doing it in a heroic fashion.
Let me warn you - healthcare data puzzles rarely play fair. They are notorious for arriving at the party without all their pieces, some forget their boxes, and a very small percentage brings a clear picture of what you’re trying to solve. If you’re like me, those challenges only make data puzzles more enticing. How many pieces are in your puzzle, begging to be put together to show a clear picture of patient throughput?