While the omicron variant hits the United States creating a devastating impact, another issue haunts the horizon: the increased shortage of home care nurses.
America’s Health Rankings rated Georgia as 44th in the nation for access to home health care workers, with only 79 home health care workers per 1,000 adults who are over 65 with a disability. This is 100 workers less than the national average. As Americans try to avoid hospitalization during the pandemic, the demand for home health care has been increasing since the start of COVID-19.
There are several causes that contribute to the problem. One is pay. According to Nurse.org, home care nurses with 10-19 years of experience make an average of $30.24 an hour on average.
“This is lower than the average pay for a surgical nurse,” Nurse.org reported.
Even before the pandemic, Georgia was facing a nursing shortage, which is in part due to Georgia’s growing population. It was also fueled by older nurses beginning to retire in higher numbers.
COVID-19 has only sharpened Georgia’s demand for nurses. This shortage has allowed nurses to move around to positions that may be more lucrative than home health care.
Since home care workers work one-on-one with their patients — and often not with other nurses — their jobs can feel isolating. Home health care nurses do not have as many opportunities to talk with their colleagues as other health care industries.
Additionally, home care makes following the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s social distancing guidelines especially difficult. Home health care workers need to take extra precautions to make sure their patients are safe.
This home care shortage affects families who need extra assistance for their children and has led to worsening critical conditions among older adults. Some patients heavily rely on home care nurses since going to the hospital could expose them to further risk. People with disabilities who need alternate care can find it difficult to obtain assistance, and waitlists for home health nurses are rapidly increasing.
In Georgia, Medicare waivers are needed for people with disabilities to live independently using community-based services. This waitlist has over 7,000 people, including some who have waited over a decade to receive these services.
As this shortage continues, some solutions have been suggested to mitigate the demand.
One is exposing nursing students to home health care environments rather than just hospital care. The lack of nursing faculty also contributes to the shortage. Associate Clinical Professor of Duke Nursing School Brenda Nevidjon and Senior Vice President of Massachusetts General Hospital Jeanette Ives Erickson suggest that aging nurses should consider teaching and becoming nursing faculty at schools.
“Practice and education have a long history of not being aligned. Perhaps the conditions now exist to unite practice and education, to have each earnestly listen to the other, and to enable them to design solutions together,” they wrote in an article published in the peer-reviewed Online Journal of Issues in Nursing.
For more content like this, sign up for the Pulse newsletter here.
CORRECTION: Associate Clinical Professor of Duke Nursing School Brenda Nevidjon’s last name was misspelled in a previous version of this story.
About the Author
