Opinion: Sabbaticals for nurses could help fight worker shortages and burnout
A new study suggests that the nursing shortage is easing, but that doesn’t mean the health care system can stop worrying about retaining new and experienced clinicians. One potential solution: paid sabbaticals for nurses and other health care workers. If professors get sabbaticals to refresh and rejuvenate to sustain their academic productivity, why not frontline health care workers?
This is not a new idea. In 1991, I assumed the position of director of nursing education and research at Beth Israel Medical Center, a teaching hospital in New York City that is now part of the Mount Sinai Heath System. The nurses’ union, 1199, had negotiated a new contract for nurses that included a sabbatical for those with 25 years of tenure at the hospital. Irene, a tough, no-nonsense nurse who had worked in the hospital’s surgical intensive care unit for 25 years, was the first nurse to pursue this opportunity.
