I posted an article about physician burn out last week. I was curious to find out if there is information on nurses and the issues that impact their ability to treat patients.
Medscape is online information for physicians and healthcare professionals. It offers “the latest medical news and expert perspectives; essential point-of-care drug and disease information; and relevant professional education and CME.”
Medscape recently surveyed US licensed practical nurses (LPNs), registered nurses (RNs), and advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) about their career satisfaction. I found some interesting parallels between physician and nurse responses.
According to this survey, the most rewarding part of a nurses job is “the gratitude expressed by patients for their excellent care, enjoying their jobs, and pride in being a nurse.” This is similar to the physician survey where a majority of physicians stated that the best part of their job is patient interaction.
The part of their job that they like the least is the amount of documentation that is required and called burdensome. Again, similar to physicians who stated that they spend 21% of their time on non-clinical paperwork.
A large majority of nurses were happy they became nurses (95%) and 85% would become nurses if they had to do it over again. 71% of physicians answered that if they had their career to do over they would choose to be a physician.
In another recent nurse survey, AMN Healthcare, a national healthcare workforce solution provider, reported that of the 3,400 nurses surveyed, 9 out of 10 are satisfied with their career choice.
“The electronic medical record was an area showing differences among the generations. Younger nurses were more positive about the technology and indicated it improved productivity, time management and the quality of patient care, while older nurses thought it was slowing them down and was not improving their patient care.”
Physicians were not as positive about the benefits of the EHR/EMR and 71% said that EHRs have had no impact or a negative impact on productivity and patient interaction.
So there is work to be done in order to improve quality of healthcare and productivity, specifically in the area of reducing documentation and training on the benefits of EHR/EMR for both nurses and physicians.