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Employee health professionals can find a wealth of resources in Stress First Aid for Health Care Workers, a compendium of tactics and assessment tools to address the growing mental health crisis.
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According to a survey by the American Nurses Foundation, nurses feel “betrayed,” “guilty,” and “like a failure.” Nurses reported feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, irritable, and anxious. One percent of respondents expressed suicidal ideation.
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Two veteran occupational health nurses described their experiences with workplace violence over the years, emphasizing this chronic situation can be stopped if individual hospital leaders set a tone that enough is enough.
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President Biden has dropped the carrot and picked up a stick, ordering healthcare workers — all 17 million — to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, or Medicare money may be withheld from their employers.
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With federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates looming, burnout at record levels, and many baby boomers nearing retirement age, a national nursing shortage is approaching that could shut down critically needed care. The American Nurses Association recently sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, calling for the Biden administration “to declare a national nurse staffing crisis and take immediate steps to develop and implement both short- and long-term solutions.”
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In a highly unusual move, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, overruled her own vaccine advisory committee when they became mired in a far-ranging debate about COVID-19 booster shots that led to an end-of-the day vote not to recommend them for healthcare workers.
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The American Academy of Pediatrics is urging the FDA to work aggressively to authorize a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine for children younger than age 12 years as soon as possible.
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Researchers found during the pre-vaccine pandemic in 2020 that 11.5% of healthcare workers who acquired COVID-19 in their hospital were occupationally infected. Thus, as has often been observed by employee health professionals, the lion’s share of exposures and SARS-CoV-2 infections in hospital staff have occurred in the community.
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Nurses already experienced high levels of burnout before the pandemic, primarily because of chronic understaffing. A regression to the mean in the coronavirus aftermath would greatly hurt the profession and the patients they protect.
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Healthcare workers are expected to be a priority for COVID-19 vaccine booster shots this fall, providing more protection against the highly transmissible delta variant and likely reducing breakthrough infections.
