Nurses are first...again!

Last year I mentioned the results of the Annual Gallup Survey on honesty and ethics among professionals , which showed that the nursing profession has the highest ethics rating among all professions, with 79% of U.S. adults stating that nurses have either "High" or "Very High" honest and ethical standards.  These results were not surprising - first of all, I have the honor and pleasure of working with a lot of great nurses!  Second, nurses have held the top ranking for every year of the survey, except one, since 1999 (which was the first year that they were added to the survey).  That year, firefighters earned a record-high 90% rating in their only appearance on the list following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  

Gallup just recently released the results of a survey that was conducted from November 1-21, 2023, which assessed the care provided in the U.S. health care system (see "Nurses First, Doctors Distant Second in Healthcare Provider Ratings").  Nurses received the highest rating by far, with 82% of those surveyed saying that nurses provide excellent or good medical care.  Physicians ranked a distant second at 69%.  

While this is a slightly different survey than the one on honesty and ethics among professionals mentioned above, the highly positive rating for nurses has stayed more or less the same with the two most recent surveys of the past, conducted in 2003 and 2010.  In contrast, other health care providers and organizations have dropped significantly compared to the last two surveys, with physician ratings dropping by 15 percentage points and pharmaceutical companies dropping 21 percentage points compared to the 2010 survey.

Also of note, hospital emergency rooms dropped by 13 percentage points and now rank lower than walk-in clinics/urgent care clinics.  I suspect a big reason for this decrease is the fact that many emergency departments were short-staffed and waiting times significantly increased during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.  Finally, only 52% of those surveyed rated telemedicine or virtual doctor visits positively, suggesting that most Americans still feel that virtual care (while a viable option) is different than in-person care.

What are the take-home messages here?  First, and most obvious (I hope), we can learn a lot from our nursing colleagues!  The care that they provide, the empathy that they show, and the commitment and dedication to always being there for their patients is an outstanding model to follow!  Second, we should continue to evaluate the growing trends with virtual care.  There is no question that virtual care can help improve access, particularly in rural areas.  However, we need to continue to evaluate how we can make virtual care "feel" more like in-person care.  Finally, there are likely some things that we can do to help offload our emergency departments (ED) - certainly making sure that all Americans have access to a primary care physician would help immensely.  I suspect that we can also better leverage urgent care (including virtual urgent care) to help decompress our ED waiting rooms.  Finally, I know of at least one or two children’s hospitals that have experimented successfully and safely with direct admissions for specific conditions, thus bypassing the ED altogether. 

I am looking forward to the next Gallup survey on honesty and ethics among professions.  Based on the results of this most recent survey, I suspect that nurses will once again rank first.  Congratulations and well-done to all of my nursing colleagues - you deserve it!!