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Survey: 93% of Pittsburgh hospital workers are thinking about leaving profession

Ryan Deto
4984599_web1_PTR-AlleghenyCOVID018-031420
Tribune-Review
A hospital room

The pandemic has been extremely hard on health care workers, with hospitals facing record high patient numbers during the past two years. Many workers have reported burnout, long hours, and feeling hopeless.

A new survey from researchers at the University of Pittsburgh confirms those reports. So much so that among the thousands of Pittsburgh hospital workers surveyed, 93% of them are thinking about leaving the profession.

Jeffrey Shook is a Pitt associate professor and author of the Pittsburgh Hospital Worker Survey. The survey had 2,253 participants, which represented hospital workers (excluding doctors) who had worked at one or more of 11 Pittsburgh hospitals within 2021.

Shook said that even though most hospital workers have contemplated leaving their jobs, a vast majority of them report the job as meaningful, and say they also want to stay to take care of patients.

“A lot of people are really thinking about leaving their jobs,” said Shook. “But they are also really committed to their patients and they are saying they are staying because of their patients.”

Nine out of 10 workers reported their job was meaningful and had moderate to high compassion satisfaction, a term that indicates the satisfaction people experience when they help others through their work, according to the report.

Among the 129 hospital workers that did report leaving to researchers, 73% said that staffing shortages were the reason they left. The majority of workers who left also reported mental and emotional demands were too high and their pay was too low.

One in three workers said they have received threats of violence from patients and/or their family members.

Of those surveyed, 84% were women and 87% of workers were white. The surveyed workers were highly educated, and 63% were nurses while 37% worked a variety of job types including food service, custodian/ janitorial services, and nursing assistants. The average pay of the surveyed workers was about $30 an hour, with 19% reporting they made less than $20 an hour.

Shook said that surveyed workers consistently said they don’t have much of a voice in workplace decisions, and indicated a desire for that to change.

Kathleen Jae is a registered nurse at Allegheny Health Network’s West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield neighborhood. She has worked for 10 years on the post-operating floor of the hospital, and said that the staff regularly turns over there every 12-15 months.

Jae said there are three nurses and no aides for 24 postoperative patients. She said understaffing is causing workers to leave and those staffing levels are unacceptable.

“We are lacking in nurses and critical support,” said Jae. “We need to return to a bottom line of excellence in health care, not just profit.”

The report says that 87% of hospital workers are reporting moderate or high levels of burnout, and 73% reported working overtime, and those are working 11 hours a day on average.

When asked how to best support hospital workers, 90% said to increase workers’ pay. Workers said hospitals should offer more benefits, like free parking and cheaper or free health insurance for workers.

According to the survey, 62% of hospital workers report living paycheck to paycheck and 28% report not being able to pay essential expenses. And 34% reported having medical debt they can’t pay off.

Despite 90% of hospital workers saying their hospitals are understaffed, workers didn’t request additional staff as a means to support themselves, instead focusing most of their solutions on better pay and benefits.

Sara Goodkind, Associate Professor of Social Work at Pitt and part of the survey’s research team, said she believes the reason workers focused on increasing their pay is because they know that will help to retain workers, which will address the understaffing issues.

Shook said the researchers will be sharing these findings with local interested parties, including hospitals, politicians, and local leaders, in hopes to encourage solutions to better support hospital workers in the region.

Ryan Deto is a TribLive reporter covering politics, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County news. A native of California’s Bay Area, he joined the Trib in 2022 after spending more than six years covering Pittsburgh at the Pittsburgh City Paper, including serving as managing editor. He can be reached at rdeto@triblive.com.

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