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Over the years, with the increase in health needs of the rapidly growing population, healthcare has evolved into a vast industry. In particular, the role of nurses in a healthcare facility has quickly developed. Nursing now encompasses a wide variety of skills and areas of healthcare, alongside the critical task of patient care.
Understanding the importance of nurses, we can deduce that nurses help and educate patients; they work in different healthcare facilities. Therefore, it’s safe to say that a healthcare facility can’t function without nurses.
However, many healthcare facilities fail to retain nurses properly as they are not fully aware of the importance of nurses. As a result, nurses do not get sufficient career development opportunities, employee recognition, and similar benefits to retain them.
This harms a healthcare facility and is also detrimental to the healthcare industry as a whole. So, to help you see the importance of nurses, here are four reasons to retain them in healthcare.
Difficult to find skilled nurses
Undoubtedly there’s been an increase in healthcare globally, primarily due to the ever-increasing population and ongoing pandemic. Consequently, the demand for nurses in every healthcare facility is increasing exponentially. After all, nurses are essential to aid all types of patients. In such a situation, a nurse shortage is inevitable, as the demand has exceeded supply.
Perhaps one of the most demanded types of nurses are the ones with an MBA degree in healthcare. This degree equips nurses with leadership, managerial, and technical skills, all sought by employers. With an increasing shortage of qualified nurses, it’s an excellent decision to get a higher degree of healthcare MBA and secure your future while climbing up the ladder of success.
Furthermore, the demand for nurses is also increasing due to the wide variety of roles they play in the functioning of a healthcare facility. All these factors contribute to a shortage of nurses. Hence, it’s becoming challenging to find skilled nurses.
In such a situation, it’s risky to lose professional nurses due to not retaining them properly. More importantly, many nurses leave the field of healthcare due to poor retention strategies.
Nurses play an essential role in the management
As mentioned earlier, nursing now encompasses several different roles in a healthcare facility. Management is one of the most important roles that nurses take on during their careers. Keeping this in mind, a healthcare facility can face many different management problems without retaining nurses.
They maintain productive working places in a healthcare facility by working in teams and instructing other workers appropriately. The leadership skills of a nurse are extremely helpful in managing a healthcare facility. Even entire emergency departments are managed and handled by nurses in most healthcare facilities.
Moreover, with a specialization in management skills, nurses can take over many more tasks, such as making budgetary decisions and coordinating meetings. Such nurses are known as nurse managers and are essential for every healthcare facility.
Candidates who want to devote their careers to helping people and take additional roles can learn how to become nurse manager to help healthcare facilities function better.
Patient care
One of the most significant roles of a nurse in healthcare is patient care. Patients are dependent on nurses since they have direct contact with them at all times and helps speed up recovery in a wide variety of ways.
Nurses take care of a patient’s physical health by offering assistance in tasks such as eating, cleaning, and moving. Furthermore, nurses also provide medicines to patients when needed. Nurses are the most familiar with patients’ conditions on an ongoing basis, as they monitor the patients regularly.
However, alongside taking care of patient’s physical health, nurses are also crucial in helping maintain patients’ mental health. They are known to listen to patients and take care of their emotional needs.
Furthermore, they also educate patients and offer to counsel. Considering the crucial role of nurses in patient care, healthcare facilities need to retain them using proper strategies.
Nurses assist doctors
Another duty of a nurse is to assist physicians and other workers in a healthcare facility. They coordinate between the physician and the patient. As nurses constantly monitor the patient and carry out many examinations, they create valuable reports for specialized physicians.
These reports are essential for the patient as they are used to develop treatment courses. Without a nurse reporting back to the physician in charge, the patient will never receive the proper treatment. Due to this reason, often, the patient relies solely on the nurse.
Furthermore, nurses also help surgeons in operations. They are also well versed in the use of different medical equipment, such as x-ray machines, while also being skilled in some medical treatment procedures.
Without proper retention of nurses, physicians will not be able to handle the workload by themselves. Consequently, the healthcare facility will no longer function well with nurses quickly leaving the field.
How can you retain nurses?
The roles and duties of nurses mentioned above in a healthcare facility prove how crucial nurses are for people’s health. It’s essential to treat them according to the contributions they make to the healthcare industry. To do so, nurse retention must be the topmost priority of healthcare facilities.
One of the most effective ways is to provide nurses with a flexible work schedule. Often nurses get exhausted due to long working hours, which forces them to leave their jobs. By providing a flexible schedule, you will keep nurses healthy and productive and keep them motivated enough to work.
Furthermore, it’s also essential to provide sufficient recognition to nurses for their contributions and efforts. As a result, nurses will feel appreciated and will continue to work hard. Offering career advancement is also an effective way to retain nurses while also making them even more experienced and skilled.
Conclusion
Considering the contributions and dedication of nurses towards maintaining the healthcare industry, it’s easy to see how important they are. It would be a wrong decision to lose such an important employee and compromise the reputation of your healthcare facility.