No matter what profession one is in, the ability to have autonomy in the workplace has historically ranked high in job satisfaction surveys.  This fact is especially proving to be true within the nursing industry where nurses demand more control over their lives.  For example, in Minnesota, a staggering 12,800 nurses recently went on a one-day strike to express their frustrations surrounding low staffing levels within their hospitals, which has resulted in longer hours and higher stress working environments.  According to a survey conducted by NurseFinders, 76% of nurses believe work-related stress leads to nurses leaving a hospital while 77% believe it leads to nurses leaving the profession entirely.  This trend obviously cannot continue if hospitals want to attract and retain high quality talent that delivers high quality care to patients. 

The shortage of nurses is a well-known problem that plays a significant role in limiting a hospital’s ability to provide better workplace autonomy to its nurses.  When short-handed, hospitals have to lean on the staff to take more shifts that degrade the work/life balance of the nursing staff.  While this is true, there are creative solutions to the nursing shortage issue that should be considered in the meantime to help increase nurses’ job satisfaction and improve nurse retention.  One important solution revolves around scheduling, where research shows that “the more stable the schedule, the less work stress, the lower anticipated turnover, the higher group cohesion, and, the higher the work satisfaction” (K.E. Shrader).  Enabling nurses to provide their scheduling preferences early on in the nurse scheduling process allows for more stability and a better work/life balance.  Providing flexibility is another important aspect that should be considered.  With the need to account for unexpected absences and fill positions on the fly, hospitals can provide nurses with more autonomy by instituting programs such as shift swapping and shift bidding. 

It can be difficult to institute such solutions manually, so it is becoming increasingly important for hospitals to adopt or integrate more sophisticated technologies into their IT systems.  While the nursing shortage issue is still being hashed out, we believe now is the time to leverage existing software technologies such as Schedulist  to implement the creative solutions that can make a positive impact in improving the quality of life for nurses.