August 16, 2021 – Nurses across the country, but especially in areas hard hit by the Delta variant, are suffering from compassion fatigue. Hospitals and health systems are also having a hard time filling vacant posts for nursing positions.
For instance, in Mississippi, Yahoo News interviewed an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse who is switching her position, citing exhaustion and mental strain after working in a hospital overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients in a state where the vaccination rate is low amid the threat of the Delta variant.
“I don’t have any strength left. Honestly, I’ve given so much I can’t keep going,” Jen Sartin, a nurse at Singing River Health System in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, said in an interview with MSNBC. “That’s why I decided to move to a different department because it’s affected me in ways I never thought possible.”
In Texas, KHOU-11 reported on Sunday that a nurse shortage at Houston hospitals has reached a breaking point as patients wait hours for care. Governor Greg Abbott has requested 2,500 out-of-state nurses to help overloaded hospitals.
And in Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that hospitals are offering large signing bonuses for experienced nurses – as high as $20,000.
“Nursing recruitment and retention has come up as a major, major pain point in the last few months,” said Lauren Rewers, a researcher at the healthcare research firm Advisory Board who said that bonuses have reached unusually high levels.
Beyond signing bonuses, Philadelphia-area hospitals are paying bonuses on top of overtime for nurses who pick up extra shifts, raising hourly wages for junior nurses seen as more easily enticed by a signing bonus at another hospital, and even paying retention bonuses to nurses in key positions, the Inquirer reported.