![]() Recognising its ability to assist with the staffing challenges many institutions would face, AMSN quickly identified an opportunity to leverage some related work it was doing to make three tools available to facilities and organisations to help them through the staffing crisis. The reach of this programme is significant and potentially impacts upwards of one million nurses in the US when we consider all medical-surgical nurses, the contingent workforce and employers.ĪMSN recognised very quickly that registered nurse staffing was going to be an issue during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in 'hot spots' seeing significant volume of cases. In addition, the very fact that the pandemic has been straining the resources for hospitals, limiting their ability to easily assess nurse competencies, makes this model, which is backed by science and psychometrically developed, to be both innovative and necessary for the quality and safety of the patients we serve. While all hospitals assess staff competencies, usually on an annual basis, the majority of these are independently created and not supported by evidence. In late 2019, AMSN began to work on an innovate and comprehensive competency model for medical-surgical nurses. Based on data from national nursing surveys, the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses (AMSN) estimates that there are approximately 600,000 medical-surgical nurses in the US. There are approximately 5,725 hospitals in the United States and four million nurses. The stress on healthcare facilities to find, hire, prepare and deploy these staff was significant at best, overwhelming at worst. In addition, hospitals cancelled elective surgeries or other outpatient activities and those staff were redeployed or 'floated' to medical-surgical units, intensive care units, emergency departments and special COVID-19 units designed and identified to care for these patients. Some of these staff are retired healthcare providers, others are students currently in medical or nursing school. Many hospitals around the country were hit with overwhelming volume and many made calls for contingent or temporary staff to support their existing staff. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a significant volume of acutely or critically ill patients in many cities around the US and globally. The impact on the public has been devastating, with over 32 million cases of COVID-19 in the US at the end of May 2021 - the largest outbreak in the world. In the United States, as in many countries, there has never been a pandemic on the scale of COVID-19. Contributor: Terri Hinkley, CEO, Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses ![]()
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