Nursing shortfall may get worse as industry battles burnout, lawmakers learn

State lawmakers who met virtually with representatives from the Massachusetts Nurses Association to kick off Nurses Week on Monday learned the vital industry is facing historic pitfalls amid widespread pandemic fueled burnout.

As reported in the Herald last week, the nursing industry in Massachusetts is facing a potential wave of resignations and relocations as the sector struggles with both pay and staffing and while nurses continue to suffer under the strain of a global pandemic responsible for the deaths of more than one million Americans.

“Nurses speak for you when you cannot,” state Rep. Denise Garlick, a registered nurse, said to open a virtual legislative briefing on the status of nursing in Massachusetts titled “Nurses Speak.”

“We must listen and learn and act,” she said. “If we as a Legislature, as a society, can care for nurses, the nurses will care for the patients. They will care for us. But if we do not act, it is not only the nurse, but the patients — ourselves, our loved ones, and all of the residents of Massachusetts — who are harmed.”

The news lawmakers received is nothing short of dire.

Nearly nine in 10 nurses surveyed by the MNA said that hospital care quality in Massachusetts has deteriorated over the last two years, with seven in 10 saying they are spread too thin and have far too many patients.

Over the next two years, the survey showed, as many nurses will age out of the job and elect retirement as will quit due to burnout and understaffing.

“These survey results emphasize what nurses continue to speak out about: high patient loads, burnout, and not enough time to spend on their patients and the impact that these are having on patient care,” Katie Murphy, the MNA president, told both Garlick and state Sen. Joan Lovely.

These problems were present before the pandemic, Murphy said, but that global catastrophe has only compounded an already struggling career field. Nurses aren’t in short supply, they just aren’t being compelled to be bedside, she said.

“We have enough nurses in Massachusetts, but they are burned out and not working on hospital floors unless things change,” she said, citing a report from the Health Policy Commission. “The supply of nurses in Massachusetts is high and continues to grow.”

Murphy and her organization, along with lawmakers, are proposing a plan to legally limit the number of patients a nurse can attend. An Act Promoting Patient Safety and Equitable Access to Care, which the Legislature could consider this year, would direct the state’s Department of Public Health to develop rules for nurse-to-patient ratios.

It may be the only way to stop the bleeding.

“Nurses are burning out and leaving bedside care,” Murphy said. “Our number one job should be to keep them there.”