nurse burnout

Burnout among healthcare professionals, particularly nurses, is a persistent issue. The ongoing nursing shortage and the upcoming boom in the aging population have intensified this problem, adding urgency to hospice and home health organizations' efforts to find effective solutions. While traditional methods focus on workload and administrative burdens, innovative strategies address the root causes of [...]

For hospice and home health organizations, effective management of triage calls impacts entire care teams and the patients in their care. As anyone in healthcare knows, health concerns and patient inquiries aren’t restricted to a 9 to 5 workday. When staff is unavailable, filling the care gaps involves patient calls routed to a call center or a nurse triage center.

UNC Continuing Care Services, a prominent North Carolina home health and hospice organization, struggled with maintaining and recruiting nurses until they began to think about their after-hours triage strategy in an entirely new way.

Nurse retention is essential to maintaining a stable and quality healthcare workforce. While workload, work environment, and professional development opportunities can significantly impact nurse retention, administrators can effectively support nurse work-life balance, reduce burnout, and improve retention by outsourcing triage along with other retention strategies.

The current environment of staffing shortage plus hospice industry growth forces organizations to think outside the box for a nurse staffing solution. External resources such as outsourced triage can help growing hospice organizations retain nurses, repurpose resources, and optimize operations.

Guest writer Erin Whalen of Compassionate Coaching offers self-awareness and self-care strategies for your after-hours nursing staff. People who are arguably doing the most important work - nurses at the bedside of the dying - don’t have a clear separation between their workday ending and their non-work life beginning. This type of workload can lead to burnout, staff retention issues, and a steep decline in team morale.