Members in Action: Yale New Haven Hospital
Responding to Staffing Needs During a Crisis
Nurse leaders at Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH), a 1,541-bed academic medical center in New Haven, Conn., used alternate staffing models to grow and retain their nursing workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic. By encouraging teamwork and prioritizing the voice of the bedside nurse, YNHH ushered in a culture shift that fundamentally improved trust and communication organization wide. As a result, YNHH nurse leaders continue to develop new staffing models in various iterations to address ever changing, post-surge patient care needs.
Before the pandemic, YNHH's intensive care unit (ICU) volume encompassed 193 beds across 11 adult ICUs. In preparation for a surge in the need for ICU care, the organization expanded ICU capacity by 75%, to a total of 338 beds. Critical care nurses were already in short supply at YNHH, as they've long been at hospitals across the nation, but the pandemic intensified demand for their services. And in addition to the expected increase in volume, many of the treatments for COVID required 1:1 care creating additional need for resources.
YNHH employed 550 full, part-time, and casual critical care nurses prior to March 2020. Nurse leaders, including Ena Williams, senior vice president and chief nursing officer, tapped the organization's existing supply of more than 4,000 nurses to bridge the resource gap. In the span of a month, YNHH had exponentially increased the support available at the bedside, using a nursing team support model to optimize the ICU nurses' capacity to care for more patients.
