Our 'Why'
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the nation will have a nursing shortage of over one million nurses by 2030. UMMS already feels the effects of this nursing shortage in Maryland and has significant nurse staffing challenges at each member organization.
Nurses are leaving the bedside or moving into agency positions at record rates for a variety of reasons, including burnout, more lucrative pay, insufficient staffing, and child and/or elder care needs. Additionally, over the next decade, over one million nurses are projected to retire. This situation is further compounded by the inability of schools of nursing to quickly produce more nurses and the proliferation of new roles that nurses can perform outside of acute care settings.
We have an imperative to create novel and innovative solutions to reimagine the care delivery model. This includes an opportunity to change the work of nurses to remove certain activities that will enable them to practice at the highest scope of their license. A significant percentage of a nurse’s work can be performed by trained unlicensed caregivers so nurses can perform “top of license” activities. UMMS is committed to identifying new expectations for work and roles within a care delivery model and team in which all members perform at the highest level of their training and abilities.
Over the last two years, our front-line team members across the System expressed experiencing:
- Moral distress
- Compassion fatigue
- Increased colleague turnover
- Low value practices
- Cognitive dissonance
- Potential for increases in patient harm
Moving towards a reimagined care delivery model, we commit to:
- Inclusivity and consideration of all ideas
- High reliability practices
- Use of evidence-based information
- Empowering clinicians
- Challenging the status quo
- Innovating current practices
- Shared focus on excellence, compassion and standardization
Learn More – Our Care Delivery Innovation Projects