First Advisor

Rajiv Sharma

Date of Award

Spring 6-16-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Economics and University Honors

Department

Economics

Language

English

Subjects

Nurses -- Supply and demand -- United States, Employee retention, COVID-19 Pandemic (2020- )

DOI

10.15760/honors.1207

Abstract

The Covid pandemic has swept across the globe impacting many different kinds of people in many different ways. Businesses and workers experienced changes in how their respective labor markets operated with new incentives. One group of laborers that experienced quite a significant impact are nurses working through the Covid pandemic. The pandemic created new incentives for nurses that heavily impacted their labor market. Through a literature review of scientific studies examining the impacts of working through a pandemic on nurses, I discovered that this was causing psychological and emotional damage to nurses. Covid spurred on an already occurring nursing shortage by causing new negative psychological and emotional impacts on nurses that incentivized them to leave the market (Lavoie‐Tremblay & others 2021, 33-43). With nurses in short supply and the pandemic only making it worse, healthcare groups responded by increasing wages (Merritt Hawkins Team 2021), but this was not entirely effective. Through the literature review of Covid’s impact and possible solutions that healthcare management can take, other incentives such as more support from managers and supervisors to help with the increasing workload from both the nursing shortage and the Covid pandemic, as well as psychological support for the harms being generated by working through Covid were revealed (Shahrour 2020, 1686-1695). The trend of employment outcomes ending in quitting and desire to quit persisted through the pandemic leaving nurses who stayed at their healthcare group in a position of increased bargaining power.

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Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/37715

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