New tonight there is a mounting crisis
in our nation's health care system
and it has to do with the nurses.
As the pandemic drove many nurses out
of the profession here in central Ohio,
hospitals are offering higher
financial incentives to retain
the nurses so they don't leave.
10 TV's Kevin Landers explains the
profession has stretched so thin
patient care is also suffering.
Since the pandemic began,
nurses have been on the front lines
putting their own lives at risk,
caring for the sick and holding the
hands of those dying from COVID-19,
and we were pushed to the brink before COVID,
and then once Kovid started and
our patients became sicker and the
volume became greater and there's
more patients that need care that
weren't getting it to begin with.
Nurses started to fall from the bedside.
Regina Miller is an emergency room nurse
and so it is concerning for all
of us that we want to be there,
we want to do our best for our patients
and when we feel like we can't.
That's heart wrenching.
She says she doesn't blame those who
leave the bedside to work somewhere else.
The bedside is a very challenging.
Physically, it's very challenging,
mentally. A lot of weekends.
A lot of nights,
lot of grueling conditions.
And there's a lot of people
that just don't want to subject
themselves to that anymore. Every
hospital in Ohio is looking for nurses.
Many nurses are leaving a position. Ali
Goins as the director of
nursing at Adena Health Systems.
It has 76 nurse openings,
but that's. Yeah, higher than what
we have experienced before for sure.
She says the stress on
her staff is noticeable.
I've heard time and time again.
I just hate watching somebody
being so sick and being terrified.
And you know not.
Not knowing what's coming next,
or maybe thinking they know what's
coming next and it's not good.
At Ohio State Wexner Medical Center,
there are 497 openings according
to his job bank Rick Lucas is
the president of the Ohio State
University Nursing Organization.
So for every patient,
that extra patient that a nurse
has above their normal workload,
there's a 7% increased risk of
patient mortality with fewer
nurses on the job hospitals or
having to pay large chunks of
overtime to keep the floors covered.
At Licking Memorial Hospital in a
small health system with fewer.
Overtime has skyrocketed since March of 2018.
Nursing overtime rose more than 48% from
$395,000 to $810,000 by March of 2021.
In contrast, from March of
2018 to March of 2019,
Ohio State Wexner Medical Center paid
more than 22,000 in nursing overtime.
The following year,
it paid less at 19,000 in nursing overtime,
I feel nursing is losing a lot
of its humanity through this.
Nursing the crisis that we're in
right now due to our shortages.
Nurse Cheryl Holyfield works in a
cancer hospital. She says a year
ago 13 nurses worked on her floor
so we only have 9 nurses on most days.
So we're four nurses short.
What we used to be like two years ago.
Do you feel like you're closer to
burnout now than you've ever been? Yes,
she says she's being pulled in so many
different directions that she no longer
has the time to sit and talk to patients.
We were so short staffed on my
unit that I was the unit clerk.
I was a charge nurse and a staff
nurse with a five patient assignment.
Honestly, that's not uncommon.
It's quite common for that to happen.
She recalled one patient whose cancer
results she wanted to share with her
and she was very tearful.
She had no family there in
the room with her and I she
wanted to share that with me.
But unfortunately my phone kept ringing
'cause I'm trying to be three people.
She says those challenges require
compensation and nurses aren't getting it.
We've got zero.
We've not got one bonus.
We've not anything, nothing.
That's where it breaks you to.
Where, like do they see us?
There is some positive
news on the nursing front.
Ohio State's College of Nursing says
more people want to become nurses.
Normally the school says it gets
about 350 applications this year.
It received 500. Applications
we had more applications to our
program than we've ever had before,
but there's a downside to that as well.
We are limited in terms of the
number of students we can accept,
and that's a real tragedy for us
because we would love to take them all.
We have a significant nursing shortage
across the country.
Universities are also struggling to
find those to teach future nurses.
There is a national shortage
for nursing faculty.
Meanwhile, nurses still on the job
wonder how much longer they can
continue their mission to help patients.
As the stress of the
profession mounts by the day
I've been a nurse for 12 years and I've
never, I've never felt this way before.
Kevin Landers, 10, TV news
now, according to the Ohio means Jobs
website, there are more than 9500 nursing
jobs openings across the state right now.
There are more than 1800 nursing jobs
open within a 50 mile radius of Columbus.