A System at a Breaking Point
Healthcare workforce shortages have become long-standing issues met with short-term fixes. From 2024 to 2034, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 5% growth in registered nurse (RN) employment, faster than average for all national occupations. On one hand, the projection demonstrates evolvement in the industry, but it also indicates vacancies that need to be filled. As of 2026, there’s a national shortage of more than 263,000 RNs in the U.S., which is anticipated to increase in 2027.*
This challenge creates a misalignment between patient demand and the supply of nurses, influencing patient outcomes and access to care. Such significant strain not only contributes to nurse burnout and healthcare system effectiveness, but it can go as far as impacting whether someone receives life-saving treatment. This is where the urgency of healthcare workforce shortages continues to skyrocket.
Sustainable change requires system-level redesign, as opposed to sitting heavily on the shoulders of healthcare professionals. As heroic as their work is, unrealistic expectations of their resilience won’t lead healthcare to the turning point that it needs.
How can systemic change address it all? In this blog post, we’ll discuss the impact of burnout and how care team redesign in healthcare meets challenges at the root, as well as the power of academic and system partnerships.
This blog is inspired by the Healthcare Leadership Webinar Series hosted by American College of Education (ACE), featuring national healthcare thought leader and ACE Ed.D. candidate Geoffrey Roche in conversation with Northwest Healthcare Market Director for Clinical Education and Professional Development Dr. Steve Marks. We invite readers to view this impactful discussion.
Key Drivers of the Healthcare Workforce Shortage
Many factors contribute to today’s healthcare staffing challenges, including nursing school enrollment, nurse faculty shortages, aging patients and nurses, and burnout, to name a few.
Nursing school enrollment is not growing fast enough, and when it does, there aren’t enough nurse educators to teach. This dichotomy erupts into a cycle. Often, higher education institutions base faculty recruitment on enrollment numbers, and when those numbers indicate disinterest in programs, they deprioritize hiring nurse educators. Then, when enrollment surges, aspiring nurses are turned away from their career goals due to too few faculty.
Another factor impacting healthcare staffing is an aging patient population and workforce. Not only is there an increase in aging Americans who need care, but a large portion of nurses are preparing for retirement. This creates less nurses who can serve as preceptors or nurse mentors. More patients and less nurses create system-wide strain.
Burnout is front and center, when it comes to current nurses either leaving the industry or finding themselves navigating overwhelming compassion fatigue symptoms. Higher patient-to-nurse ratios leave them stretched thin without the time or energy needed to prioritize self-care. This is in addition to operational disruptions at the system level that make nursing more challenging than necessary.
A Structural, Not Temporary, Challenge
Without systematic reform, addressing healthcare staffing challenges is unlikely to see improvement. It’s paramount that healthcare leadership integrate targeted interventions that address nurse burnout with effective solutions. This is not a time to put a band aid on a bruise but to heal a broken system that impacts patient safety, care and outcomes.
Burnout Is a Systemic Problem, Not a Personal One
What Burnout Looks Like on the Frontlines
Nurses leave the profession within their first two years for various reasons including but not limited to too many hours, lost time with their families, lack of resources and more. Most notably, research shows that they’d be willing to return with reduced hours or increased leadership support.
The day-to-day hustle of nursing extends far beyond their passion for patient care. Balancing high patient loads with constant emergencies and interruptions results in emotional and physical strain. From a patient’s condition changing to unexpected fire drills, nurses and patients alike are impacted by unmet needs.
Ripple Effects of Burnout
Burnout can lead to increased staff turnover and retention challenges, creating organizational strain. For example, new nurses observing preceptors experiencing lacking resources and frustration can create weakened morale and loyalty. If a preceptor is not trained for mentorship and is frustrated with systemic inefficiencies, an observing new nurse may feel less amicable about the profession as well as one day becoming a nurse leader or educator. Similarly, it may result in decreased retention.
Rethinking Burnout in Healthcare
It’s easy to point the finger at healthcare leaders, patients, nurses or any one contributor as the source of burnout. This type of thinking creates further disruption by creating distrust and unpleasant work environments. The pathway forward involves exploring systemic nurse burnout solutions that can lead to feasible shifts toward improvement.
Redesigning Care Teams: The Most Powerful Lever for Change
What Care Team Redesign Really Means
Care team redesign in healthcare is not only a solution but an essential shift to combat nurse burnout through operational restructuring. While well-meaning wellness initiatives boost morale and recruiting additional staff builds manpower, these temporary efforts don’t necessarily address the root cause of healthcare workforce shortages.
To combat burnout operationally, it involves moving beyond physician- and nurse-centric employment models and prioritizing efficient, organized operations that integrate multidisciplinary teams. Doing so effectively enables staff to execute their expertise without the burden of covering responsibilities outside of their purview on a regular basis. That’s where redesigning becomes the turning point that healthcare systems need.
Core Principles of Effective Team Design
A central goal that care team redesign in healthcare can accomplish is fixing a disconnect between workforce realities and how care is structured. For this to succeed, healthcare leaders must take time to fully understand the needs and experiences of the workforce. This information helps guide optimizations and role clarity, resulting in a balanced workload distribution. For example, expanding roles for support staff can reduce the administrative burden on nurses.
Nurse burnout solutions start with operational restructuring. Systems can make internal shifts including:
- Designing workflows that reduce cognitive overload
- Optimizing staffing models to match patient acuity, not just ratios
- Reducing non-clinical task burden on nurses
- Leveraging technology to support decision-making, not complicate it
- Building psychological safety and supportive leadership structures
- Creating predictable scheduling and recovery time policies
There are also external relationships that can support healthcare system efficiency. These connections and tools build cross-functional, technology-enabled models that maximize the scope of practice. Systems can:
- Deploy technology to support coordination and decision-making
- Integrate cross-functional partners (pharmacy, social work, case management)
- Use data to dynamically align skills with patient needs
- Reduce fragmentation through shared accountability
The Impact of Team-Based Care
When multiple parts of a system are working without unnecessary disruption, a well-oiled machine results. In the specific case of healthcare staffing challenges, adopting team-based care models can cultivate:
- Reduced burnout and increased retention
- Improved efficiency and effectiveness
- Higher quality care and better patient outcomes
Building Strong Internal Talent Pipelines
Upskilling, reskilling and creating career mobility pathways for healthcare staff can not only reduce shortages but a need for external recruitment. Nurses who left the profession within their first two years reported that most of their managers were business professionals without nursing experience who did not meet basic workplace needs, and this resulted in departure. Providing targeted continuing education pathways that advance employees into management and senior roles builds connections between workforce needs and leadership quality.
Additionally, this effort:
- Addresses training bottlenecks
- Creates clearer progression paths
- Reduces external hiring needs
- Promotes workforce mobility
- Increases employee engagement, retention and loyalty
- Stabilizes staffing shortages
- Generates stronger patient outcomes
Academic partnerships can equip nurses for higher roles in flexible, affordable ways. Systems gain the most benefit from these connections when keeping a few tips in mind:
- Identifying a faculty-led program versus a self-directed one to support stronger outcomes
- Offering hands-on experience to support what’s taught in the classroom
- Predicting what the workforce need will be, so you can proactively fill vacancies in high-turnover areas
The Role of Education and Academic Pathways
Aligning Education With Workforce Needs
Nursing is a career field with subspecialties, and sometimes, nursing programs prepare students to enter the field and pass a licensure exam without gauging interest for work environments. This can result in new nurses starting their careers in areas that may not be the right fit and leaving the profession without exposure to subspecialties that are more suitable. It also creates a gap between academia and practice.
Healthcare systems can support bridging the gap between academia and practice through upskilling nurses to be equipped to work in various specialties and leadership roles. This effort can boost retention and interest for future generations of nurses, ultimately addressing healthcare workforce shortages.
Expanding Access to Learning
Nurses, especially those working full-time, need academic programs designed to fit their schedules and budgets. Flexible, scalable training models support career growth without taking them away from their current roles. This benefits the nurses and their employers.
ACE offers nursing programs with fully online coursework and local practicums. Curricula are intentionally crafted to prepare aspiring nurses to obtain licensure while also ensuring career readiness. Faculty are practicing nurse leaders who offer relevant knowledge and practice grounded in research and experience.
Partnerships between academic institutions and healthcare systems further expand access to learning. For example, ACE crafts customized workforce solutions that address targeted human capital gaps in healthcare settings, including nursing. With these solutions come exclusive benefits like:
- Reduced tuition rates
- Credit for prior learning or professional development
- Cost saving opportunities through direct bill and/or large student cohorts
Conclusion: From Crisis to Opportunity
At the end of the day, the healthcare workforce shortage increases with urgency as time continues on. The scale of this challenge has made a systemwide impact on healthcare professionals and patients. Redesigning care delivery, rethinking workforce strategies, and investing in multifunctional teams and talent development can target root causes effectively for the long haul.
American College of Education (ACE) offers affordable programs with flexible coursework in nursing and healthcare to build tomorrow’s leaders in quality patient care.
*Health Resources and Services Administration Data Warehouse (Workforce Projections, Registered Nurses). Accessed Feb. 23, 2026.
