International Nurses Day is an important opportunity to check the pulse of nurses around the world, especially in 2022. Nurses have given their all in the response to pandemics, natural disasters, and in war zones, in leading mass COVID-19 testing and vaccination efforts, and in completely redesigning how and where care is delivered. The value of nurses has never been more clear. Nor could it be any clearer that not enough is being done to protect nurses and other health workers, tragically underscored by the more than 180,000 health worker deaths due to COVID-19 and the alarming increase of mental health conditions and concerns nurses report.  

COVID-19 has altered many nurses’ career plans – over the past two years, McKinsey & Company has found that worldwide, nurses consistently, and increasingly, report planning to leave the workforce at higher rates compared with the past decade. Those departures have profound implications for the health of citizens and systems everywhere. Indeed, the greatest threat to global health is the workforce shortage. 

As part of our Meeting of Minds series, we listen in as four McKinsey partners from their Healthcare Systems & Services practice discuss the results of a McKinsey & Company survey of frontline nurses across six countries including Brazil, France, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In this conversation we hear Gretchen Berlin, RN, Thomas London, MBA, Robin Roark, MD, MBA, and Senthu Arumugam, MBA explore the survey’s findings of why nurses are considering leaving their roles, what energizes them to keep going,  and how nurses around the world are eager to innovate and deliver care in different and better ways to solve what has become a consequential global problem.

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