Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

21 NURSING SPOTLIGHT Nurses just want to be nurses again: ANA leader By Erica Carbajal I n most cases, "just a nurse" isn't a welcomed phrase. But quite literally, today's nurses want to get back to a place where they can actually focus on being nurses and providing patient care instead of being an "organizational sponge" that absorbs what oen seems like an infinite number of tasks, Katie Boston-Leary, PhD, RN, wrote in an Aug. 3 opinion piece published in nurse.org. Dr. Boston-Leary is the director of nursing programs at the American Nurses Association and an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing in Baltimore. Technology and the re- introduction of resource nurses, or the "extra pair of hand" roles, she writes, are two critical ways to better support nurses with responsibilities such as medication preparation, cleaning rooms, restocking and many others. She cited studies indicating there could be a 10 percent net time reduction in a typical shi if nurses were able to delegate these types of tasks. Even though nurses and their leaders alike recognize the value of supportive nursing roles, they're oen the first to get eliminated "because they seem costly and are not included in productive time," she said. But when it comes to redesigning care delivery models, any that don't integrate technology and supportive nursing roles won't succeed in addressing nurses' core concerns of feeling overburdened with work that takes them away from patient care, she argues. "All nurses are asking at this point is that they want to practice nursing and not be the 'organizational sponge' that absorbs all other tasks that other professionals will not, can not or are unavailable to complete," Dr. Boston-Leary wrote. "In other words, can nurses just be nurses today and everyday? is is how we start to rebuild and reform work environments that are healthy — where nurses and patients will thrive and flourish." n New NCLEX format shows positive results for first- time exam takers By Ashleigh Hollowell B etween January and June, NCLEX pass rates increased for both licensed practical and vocational nurse candidates, according to second quarter results of 2023 pass rates across the U.S., released Aug. 3 by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. These results are the first to be published since the NCSBN debuted its new Next Generation NCLEX exam format, which launched in April. In the first quarter of the year between January and March, there were 56,972 U.S.-educated, first-time candidates who took the NCLEX exam resulting in an 80.48 percent pass rate. But between April and June — following the launch of the new exam format — there were 60,844 U.S.-educated, first- time candidates of which 94.32 percent passed. Compared to the same timeframe in 2022, only 82.19 percent had passed. "Although clinical judgment was being taught in prelicensure programs, NCSBN worked with educators to explain how the NGN was being constructed using the Clinical Judgment Measurement Model at its core," Philip Dickison, PhD, RN, chief operating officer, NCSBN said in an Aug. 3 news release. "Educators were introduced to the types of questions that would be included and the type of exam experience a candidate will have. The results from the first quarter show that our collaboration was successful." Individuals who were first-time exam takers with an international education passed in the first quarter of 2023 at a percent rate of 39.86 percent, but in the second quarter 57.69 percent passed. Among repeat exam takers who were U.S.-educated, 40.66 percent passed in the first quarter and 62.15 percent passed in the second quarter. n Address the pay gap One area that would be remiss not to mention is compensation. Increasingly, "when you talk to new graduates, their primary objective is get a couple years of experience and then go travel," Dr. Austin said. And understandably so, as the weekly average for travel nurse pay remains nearly 30 percent higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to data from Vivian Health, a national healthcare hiring marketplace. Overall, med-surg nurses tend to earn less than nurses in specialties like intensive care or emergency department, though it's difficult to put hard numbers on the comparison given a range of factors that play a role in salary, such as nurses' level of experience. Still, to retain experienced nurses in med-surg, any considerable gap is worth leaders' attention. "We're trying to work on that pay gap because … whereas an ICU nurse is focused on the technical skills of taking care of two critically ill patients, you have to have a broad range of skill sets to be able to take care of six patients at a time," Dr. Austin said. "To me, the skill sets are equivalent, but used differently to take care of different patient populations." Bottom line, hospitals need more med-surg nurses. Getting them — and getting them to stay — requires a range of efforts to reduce workload burden and ensure the specialty remains just as attractive as others. n

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