The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) has launched Hear Us Out, a nationwide effort to show the COVID-19 pandemic from frontline nurses’ perspective and urge those who have yet to be vaccinated to reconsider. Nurses and healthcare systems are being pushed to the breaking point as the Delta variant fills hospitals with younger and sicker patients. “We don’t want to scare the public, yet we are obligated to paint an accurate picture of life and death with COVID-19 in an ICU,” says Beth Wathen, president of AACN, which supports mandatory vaccines for healthcare workers.

The study also revealed several trends, including:

• New hires who don’t have a connection with their team, managers, or organization are at the greatest risk for turnover. About one in five nurses who fits this profile leaves their job.
• Employee engagement ratings dropped at twice the rate among RNs compared with non-RNs in the past 12 months.
• Shift schedules play a significant role in employee engagement: Nurses who work night and weekend shifts reported lower levels of engagement than their day-shift counterparts.

Social determinants of health such as food security and housing have a greater impact on health outcomes than clinical care. Health equity has become a hot topic in healthcare during the coronavirus pandemic, with the disproportionate impact on vulnerable populations such as African Americans highlighting health inequities in the United States.

The national health inequities during the pandemic have played out in the Nashville area, says Joseph Webb, DSc, MS, chief executive officer of Nashville General Hospital. “We have a marginalized population. We have the disproportionate impact that occurs on certain populations—which has been pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Health disparities seem to surface with any type of epidemic or pandemic particularly as it relates to the marginalized population.”

Check your emergency rooms, outpatient clinics, wound care clinics, ambulatory care sites, and anywhere else where pandemic-related equipment shortages have forced your facility to go outside normal supply lines for replacement medical devices.

You could be saving yourself an immediate threat to health and safety (ITHS) citation by The Joint Commission (TJC), which could then threaten your accreditation and ability to offer services.

Staff, equipment, and supply shortages are just a few of the many impacts that the COVID-19 public health emergency has had on hospitals. But expect those pandemic-related road bumps to continue for the near future as a wave of patient surges continue to ripple across the nation.

One of the more critical issues impacting healthcare providers today is physician suicides, discussed by University of Iowa professors Diane S. Rohlman, PhD, of the department of Occupational & Environmental Health, and Gerard Clancy, MD, clinical professor of psychiatry and emergency medicine and former president of the University of Tulsa.

Suicide rates and mental health issues were already high in the medical field before the pandemic, which then added stress to already burdened physicians, nurses, and clinicians.

Studies show male physicians are at 1.5 to 1.9 times higher risk of suicide than the general population, while female physicians are at 2.27 to 2.78 times higher risk. And despite their background in medicine, physicians are much less likely to seek treatment for depression or suicidal ideation than the general population.