Safe Staffing and Wages

The National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care reported a new survey showing that the nursing home industry is paying overtime, and relying on agency and temporary staff at record levels. In short, there’s a huge demand for healthcare workers and not enough supply.

Industry wages need to increase to a living wage to recruit and retain qualified employees. Compassion and competence require competitive wages.

Overtime leads to burn-out and frustration. This leads to turnover and less quality of care.

The use of agency staff or temporary staff hurt continuity of care and communication among health-care providers. This also diminishes quality of care.

Safe staffing means providing a sufficient number of competent and compassionate qualified caregivers with reasonable work environment and competitive wages.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that only 64% of nursing home staff have been vaccinated.

The vast majority of nurses support COVID-19 vaccines. Most back healthcare worker vaccine mandates. See the new survey conducted by the American Nurses Association (ANA). The ANA poll found that 88% of the 4,900 nurses surveyed were vaccinated or planned to get vaccinated. According to the survey, 59% of nurses support vaccines mandates in the workplace, while another 12% are in favor of vaccinate mandates for customer-facing employees only.