Bluem Nursing

Happy Monday! 😊 Part 2 of our demographics series: today we’re focusing on the specialties and shifts worked by nurses who responded to our Rate Your Hospital survey. Our sample includes nurses from various specialties, with Critical Care being the largest group at 31%. Most respondents work day shift, as shown in the attached image. We’re already using this data to gain insights into nurses’ experiences—like our earlier posts on Mental Wellness among Medical/Surgical/Observation nurses. We’re now exploring how experiences differ by shift, particularly how unit culture sentiment might vary within the same unit across different shifts. We deeply value the responsibility of representing these nurses' experiences. While our largest sample groups provide the most generalizable data, every individual response is important and contributes to the rich tapestry of our community. Thank you to all the nurses who have shared their experiences. If you’d like to share your story, please visit our website. 💛 Bluem Nursing

Today let's look at the demographics in our sample! 😊 In the attached image you'll see distributions of our inpatient staff nurse sample by age and years of experience (both rounded to the closest year). These distributions reflect responses from just over 2,600 nurses. The median age for the sample is 33 and the median years of experience is 7. We are privileged to be working with a data set that reflects such a broad range of lived experiences - we will be utilizing subsets of our sample to look at how experiences change over the course of a nurse's life and career. Next week we'll be looking at distributions of our sample by shift worked and by specialty. In the meantime, let us know - what parts of the nursing population does your work connect with? Are there any parts of the nursing community who have historically not been represented enough in the research you've read? Bluem Nursing #nurse #nurseadvocacy

As we explored in our previous post on mental health and unit culture, we've found that adult Medical/Med-Surg/Surgical/Observation nurses who are dissatisfied with their unit are more likely to be concerned about nurse-to-patient ratios. As one might expect, these nurses typically work with ratios of 1:4, 1:5, or 1:6. Interestingly, those who dislike their unit are more likely to report working with a 1:6 ratio—43% of them indicated this was their average in the past month. This aligns with our earlier findings that nurses unhappy with their unit are more concerned about patient ratios. While not surprising, these insights validate experiences that might otherwise be dismissed as anecdotal. They also suggest two paths forward: in the short term, we can learn from units that manage high ratios effectively (as seen in nurses with those ratios who still report liking/loving their unit); in the long term, we can advocate for better staffing ratios and guide nurses toward hospitals that support them. We're curious for your thoughts - have you been on a unit with a high ratio that handled it well? What contributions can other floor personnel, such as CNAs/PCTs and LPN/LVNs, make to support the team when ratios are high? And how do we ensure those other vital team roles are not overburdened in the process? 💛 Bluem Nursing #nurses #nurseadvocacy #nursing

What unit and hospital culture components impact nurse burnout? The answer is 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙭, but we are excited to share some of our findings. Today, we'll focus on burnout experiences for adult Med/Med-Surg/Surg/Observation nurses. We compared experiences of two groups to identify key differences: ✨ (A) Nurses who love their unit and are not experiencing burnout. ✨ (B) Nurses who dislike their unit and are experiencing burnout. 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀: 1. "I am pressured to put patient satisfaction over my own well-being." ✴ 38% of Group A and 84% of Group B reported "usually" or "always" feeling this pressure. ✴ While neither group is having an ideal experience, it's clear that the Group B is having more intense and difficult experiences. 2. We see a common theme emerge around the importance of unit management having the time and resources needed to support their staff. (Side note: we also have a nurse manager version of the Rate Your Hospital survey and will share results from this soon!):  ✴ Group A: Majority report management "usually" or "always" advocates for them and creates meaningful change. ✴ Group B: Only 7% report management "usually" or "always" creates change, and 20% report management "usually" advocates for them. ✴ Here we see a bigger difference in experience overall, relative to what we saw for the question around pressure to meet patient needs above one's own. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: ✨ Most nurses feel pressured to prioritize patient care over their own needs. ✨ Burnout may be linked to management's efforts to change this paradigm. ✨ Effective support for nurse management is crucial to prevent burnout among both staff and managers. Looking at the research from Toby Bressler, PhD, RN, OCN, FAAN and Lauren G., PhD, FNP-BC, we can see that there is a developing crisis for nurse managers as well (I will link to their work in comments) - as with so many things in healthcare, effects in one space ripple through others, turning what could have been small waves into potent forces. Bluem Nursing, we hope to create positive change for both staff nurses and nurse managers. We’d love to hear your thoughts—do these findings match your experiences? Are there any noteworthy efforts to address these issues? Let us know in the comments!

When we saw how impactful unit satisfaction was on a nurse’s desire to leave the profession (see my previous post for more details), all of us at Bluem Nursing knew that we needed to continue investigating.  We decided to dive into how those unit satisfaction results related to mental health. In the attached graphic you'll see our findings on some of the most commonly reported mental health experiences by adult Med/Med-Surg/Surg/Observation nurses and how they relate to unit satisfaction. What jumps out immediately is the impact of unit on one's mental wellness: ⭐️ Those who reported not liking their unit were almost 3x more likely to report feeling burnt out compared to those who love their unit.  Moral distress/injury follows a similar pattern. ⭐️ Anxiety, concern about workplace violence, insomnia are consistent ⭐️ Those who don't like their unit were 2x as likely as both other categories to report concerns about unsafe staffing ratios - we will share more about this soon.  It is worth mentioning as well that *all* nurses are experiencing negative effects on their mental wellness, regardless of how much they may love their unit. Looking back on our prior reported findings on nurses considering leaving the profession, these results potentially point toward the power of a supportive team environment to retain nurses in the profession. There is so much more to be done to understand these experiences and to look for the most effective way to help to mitigate them, if they can't be prevented entirely. We are so grateful to the nurses who have shared their experiences with us and we continue to take seriously our responsibility in utilizing this information to improve conditions for all nurses across the country. Next up, we'll talk about correlated experiences with those reporting burnout, especially in relation to those who aren't currently experiencing it. In the meantime, we'd love to hear your thoughts on these figures! What jumps out to you most? How does this compare with your experiences? Sarah Wells, MSN, RN, CEN, CNL Ayla Roberts, MSN, RN Lendra James DNP, MS, RN, NE-BC Todd R. Otten, M.D. Emily Rubin, BSN, RN

Sometimes during data analysis, a number jumps off the page and demands attention in a remarkable way. This was the case when we first looked at the figures on nurses considering leaving the profession - we saw that 42% of inpatient nurses had considered this in the past 6 months. We knew immediately that we needed to look for factors driving this figure and turned to an intuitive one - unit satisfaction. We looked at how nurses responded to a question on their feelings about their unit and compared that with the question on leaving the profession - here is what we found: 🔸 18% of those who “𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞” their unit have thought about leaving nursing recently. 🔸 49% of those who “𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞” their unit have thought about leaving nursing recently. 🔸 78% of those who 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 the unit have thought about leaving nursing recently. It is frankly incredible to see such a clear impact from one single factor as this. And it of course leads to many more questions: 🔸 What pushes a nurse from liking their unit to loving it? 🔸 Is there a point in a nurse's career where this sense of belonging on one’s unit matters less in decisions about one’s career? 🔸 How does moral injury or burnout relate to unit satisfaction? 🔸 Do nurses typically follow through on these feelings? 🔸 Do nurses in different specialties have different results from these questions? 🔸 What adjustments can hospital and unit leadership make to improve the professional experience for nurses beyond unit culture, especially for changes that can be applied quickly? 🔸 For nurses who have decided that inpatient nursing isn’t for them, are there other avenues of nursing where they might still be able to find a professional home? In truth, there are dozens more questions that these findings prompt, which themselves will yield further insight and more needed follow-ups. We are so grateful to our nurse community for entrusting us with this information and we could not be more excited to honor that effort by investigating these questions and sharing the findings with this community. 💛 If you are interested in learning more about our work and how you can get involved in what we are doing at Bluem Nursing, please connect with us and reach out! 😊 What do you think about these insights Theresa Mazzaro RN CHCR RACR Zach Smith, BSN, RN Anthony Scarpone-Lambert, BSN, RN Rebecca Love RN, MSN, FIEL Sara Fung, MN, BSN, RN Veronica Cooper, BSN, RN, RNC-OB?

Today, Ian is uncovering more insights from our Rate Your Hospital results. ☺️ What are your thoughts? #nursesatisfaction #nursepay #nursetransparency #bluemnursing #bluemnurse

Nurses: this is for you ✨ We hope you love it! #nursepay #nurse #nurses #nursepaytransparency #nurseadvocacy

We are so excited to announce the launch of Bluem, the completely anonymous transparency platform for nurse pay and satisfaction. Nurses have been asking for this for years and it's finally here - anonymously share YOUR experience and Bluem will amplify our collective voice.  🎉 #nursepay #nurses #nursesatisfaction #nursetransparency #nurseadvocacy #nursesunite