The Omicron variant is burning out nurses

Welcome back to Path to Recovery, a newsletter that will bring you weekly conversations on how the health care profession will recover from one of the most significant crises of our time. Click "subscribe" above or follow along using #PathtoRecovery.

Here’s what we’re talking about this week.

#Healthcarein2022: Next week is the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, an event that’s long been seen as a curtain raiser on what the coming year will bring for the industry. The conference — where the draw is less about the presentations and more about the networking opportunities and side events that fill the hotels and cafes of downtown San Francisco — is meeting virtually again this year.?

Still, I’ll be gathering your predictions next week to set the stage for 2022. Weigh in using the #Healthcarein2022 hashtag, and I’ll be linking to some of the most interesting ideas next week.

#NursesonLinkedIn: Over the holidays, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased isolation requirements for people infected with COVID-19. Instead of 10 days of isolation, the CDC now says people can isolate for just five days and then be around others as long as they’re wearing a mask. While the updated guidelines are intended to ease staffing woes, particularly in overwhelmed hospitals, the country’s largest nursing union is not happy about the changes.

“We're already strained,” Jean Ross, co-president of National Nurses United, told NPR . “And putting us at risk for more transmission, illness and death is not going to help the fact that we're short of people working right now.”

The nurses union is also among a number of groups suing the Biden administration to extend the emergency standards that were implemented last June to protect health care workers. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration had to rescind the rules — which called for screening patients for covid, personal protective equipment for workers and HVAC improvements — because temporary measures can’t be in place for longer than six months.??

While covid cases are surging, the biggest threat for hospitals — particularly in places with high vaccination rates — seems to be less about ICU capacity and more about having enough workers to staff those beds, especially as health care professionals contract the virus themselves.

And nurses are already at their limit.?

On the same day that the CDC shortened its isolation guidelines, Medscape released a survey of more than 10,700 nurses that attempted to quantify the extent of the burnout crisis. About 84% of registered nurses reported at least some degree of burnout, with 17% said they’re “very” burned out. And 40% said their job satisfaction has decreased as a result of the pandemic.?

It’s not hard to understand why. In addition to working short staffed, about 20% of respondents said they’ve lost a colleague to covid. Assaults on nurses also have increased : One in five nurses surveyed said they experienced physical abuse last year, most commonly from patients.

And the staff shortages have gotten so dire that health care professionals feel forced to return to work to relieve their colleagues — regardless of official guidance.?See what nurses are saying here:

#MentalHealth While there’s been a lot of coverage about burnout, health care professionals often tell me that their workplace only offers lip service to supporting them. But what about when they proactively speak up? Is talking about burnout still a taboo?

On that front, at least, the tides appear to be turning, with more health care professionals than not,saying they’d feel comfortable speaking to their managers about burnout.

Take the poll and see what others are saying here:?