International Nurses Day is recognized every May 12 and we thought none better than to celebrate such an awe-inspiring profession than to invite our community members to join a small group discussion centered around the topic on that Thursday evening.
Attendees gathered at Leon’s Full Service in Decatur for our Nurse a Cocktail event, which included conversations around the current nursing shortage, the daily life of a nurse, the gender imbalance, new nursing programs in our community, and other components of the multi-layered career – all over complimentary cocktails, of course. After all, we have to celebrate these saints!
As our members sipped and shared, we uncovered quite a plethora of all things nursing-related:
Burn Out and Talent Shortage
Many nurses, nurse practitioners, and technicians are feeling extremely burned out, which is contributing to the nursing shortage. Right now, one nurse may have anywhere from four to eight patients. Not to mention, people often don't have a primary care physician, which only adds to their already overwhelming workload. In fact, this nursing shortage has been a decade in the making – we need about a million new nurses across the United States by 2030 to account for the largest generation (Baby Boomers) getting older. In general, our members felt over-worked and under-appreciated – a lot of which stems from the pandemic and the lack of personnel, ultimately making it a vicious cycle.
Introductory Education
Special guests outside of our Ponce community, Duane Sprull and Terra Smiley from the City Schools of Decatur, joined in and shared that they will be implementing a certified nursing assistant program in collaboration with Emory’s School of Nursing this coming August at 250 E Ponce. Their conversations with members and Emory alumni Kathryn Martel (RN, Emory) and Madeline Williford (RN, Grady) centered around them coming to speak to the high school students in the near future. Barbara Brown, another community member, spoke with the faculty about the potential for an architecture course as well – even more evidence of how our activations lead to cross-pollination across industries and topics!
Lack of Experience
Current nurses are finding that nursing graduates are entering the workforce with little to no clinical experience. This is adding to the quick turn-over rates the nursing world is experiencing, and ultimately increasing the workload of experienced nurses. As hospitals and medical offices closed their doors for only essential personnel, hands-on experience for nursing students came to a sudden halt. Those that graduated in 2020 and 2021 lacked real-life opportunities that nurses pre-pandemic benefitted from. This has ultimately added yet another level of challenges to the new nursing workforce. To combat this, our attendees vocalized that more virtual reality (VR) tools and simulation labs would be a huge help, and they are excited for the new Emory School of Nursing's state-of-the-art learning center at 250 E Ponce.
Additional Nursing Topics
As always, we wanted to understand what else our community was interested in when it came to nursing. Responses included:
In addition to our discussions, we invited Programmer and VR Specialist Adam Bengis to talk about the development of virtual reality technology in the field of nursing. Adam is a Leukemia survivor as well, and had a very touching conversation with Kathryn, who works in Oncology, about his appreciation for nurses like her who cared for him.
Another special thing that occurred that evening were the reunions and new connections made. When Robyn Brown arrived, she was overwhelmed with excitement when she saw Duane Sprull – they knew each other from when she was in high school and they had not seen each other in over a decade! More so, the activation concluded with everyone exchanging information and saying how excited they were to meet new people.
All in all, we had a great time celebrating our hard-working nurses and our community members!