The Childcare Crisis - Emerging Nurse Leader

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

The childcare crisis in the United States today has become a nurse staffing crisis, especially in acute care hospitals where many nurses are in their peak childbearing years. We can no longer ignore the impact of what is happening here. I hear cries for help from managers in almost every retention workshop that I do. The following is just a sample of the challenges that leaders have been telling me their nurses are facing:

Single moms are in tears because they need to work, but their childcare arrangements are falling apart.
Young nurses are quitting because they have made a family decision that childcare is just too expensive.
Summer camps have closed abruptly because of COVID, with no alternative care for frantic parents.
Children testing positive for COVID and nurse parents leaving mid-shift to pick them up from school using all their PTO to care for them.
Daycare settings alert parents of new reduced hours of operations because of a lack of staff.
No childcare available that spans a 12-hour shift.
Reliable daycare centers abruptly close because they can no longer find staff.

We are starting to see evidence of the impact. A recent Health Affairs workforce research report noted a 4.0 percent reduction in the number of RNs younger than age 35 working and a 0.5 percent reduction in the number of RNs ages 35 to 49. Undoubtedly, some of this workforce reduction is due to childcare issues.

Some health systems are acting by establishing childcare task forces. Options under consideration include but may not be limited to the following:

Provide onsite childcare and backup sick childcare.
Establish resource guides and links to platforms like Otter, Wonderschool, or CareLuLu to connect parents with childcare providers in their community.
Use a weekend Baylor Plan schedule targeted to parents with young children
Encourage job-sharing of 12-hour shifts by parents who each work six hours.
Partner with national childcare providers to provide flexible hours for their workforce.
Include childcare vouchers as part of an employee benefits package.

Now is the time for nurse leaders to proactively get involved by doing a demographic profile of their current nursing staff to learn how many might be struggling with this issue. There could be a strong business case for being very proactive about childcare support. It could be a critical differentiator for recruitment and retention. Parents worry about their kids – if their kids are well taken care of that is a strong job embeddedness factor that will make it hard to leave the organization.

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