Literature Review

Hospice nurse executive: Leaders’ ‘tough balance’ on improving health equity, sustainability Hospice News; by Holly Vossel; 11/3/26 Today’s hospice leaders are balancing several competing demands in the battle of sustainability, according to Altonia Garrett, a registered nurse. ... Hospice News recently sat down with Garrett to discuss the most significant challenges at both clinical and business leadership levels. ... Improving diversity and inclusion in hospice leadership requires more than acknowledging the problem or making a commitment to representation. We must start by looking at how people get into leadership in the first place. It is not enough to say we want more diversity. We must examine how we recruit, develop, mentor, sponsor and promote people, and whether everyone has a fair opportunity to advance. That means investing in people who may not have access to traditional professional networks and giving emerging leaders meaningful opportunities to demonstrate what they can do.

CMS and states launch $275 million initiative to recruit and retain nurses in nursing homes CMS Newsroom; Press Release; 10/23/26 The new Nurses for Nursing Homes initiative is expected to support more than 4,000 nurses and nursing students nationwide, including those serving rural communities. Nursing students and licensed nurses interested in working in a nursing home may now qualify for up to $40,000 in student loan repayment and/or a $10,000 stipend in exchange for a three-year commitment to serve in a qualifying nursing home in a rural or higher labor-shortage area through a new $275 million nationwide initiative announced today by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). 

NY nursing home hit with $6.8M verdict in understaffing case Law360; by Gianna Ferrarin; 10/16/26A New York state jury reached a $6.8 million verdict against a nursing home accused of understaffing its approximately 62-bed facility and causing severe patient neglect, counsel for a certified class. [Access to the full article requires a free trial or paid subscription.]

Hospice nurses, doctors take on Allina Health over pay, staffing in dueling strikes Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder; by Clint Combs; 9/28/26 Allina Health hospice nurses struck for a week over unpaid overtime and holiday pay, while 150 unionized doctors staged a historic four-day walkout of their own, as workers press for protections ahead of a proposed $26 billion merger with Sutter Health. More than 60 hospice nurses represented by SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa picketed outside Abbott Northwestern Hospital for a week, demanding overtime and holiday pay from Allina Health after a year of stalled negotiations. The strike overlapped with a historic four-day walkout by 150 unionized doctors, who reached a tentative deal with Allina on Sept. 22.

A new way to measure nursing productivity: Total labor cost per admission HFMA - Health Operations Management; by Sylvain Trepanier, DNP, RN, CENP and Cynthia Salisbury, MSN, RN, NEA-BC; 9/25/26An innovative model for measuring nurse productivity better accounts for patients’ care needs and the team-based nature of nursing care. ... Leaders at Providence [a large regional health system based in Renton, Washington] decided it was important to create space for nurses to define for themselves how to deliver care most effectively in the acute care setting. Nurses were invited to deconstruct their current role and create a new model of care based on the needs of their patients, with an appropriate distribution of patient care across a collaborative team.

Healthcare doesn’t need forward deployed engineers. It needs forward deployed operators. HIT Consultant; by Frederik Mueller; 9/22/26 The forward deployed engineer model, embraced across enterprise technology, is built on a seductive assumption: that the gap between a technology’s potential and its adoption is primarily a technical gap. A missing integration. A misconfigured workflow. A feature not yet built. Fix the code, and the organization will follow. In most industries, that assumption is partially right. In healthcare, it is almost entirely wrong. In part, healthcare organizations contribute to the problem because most evaluate technology vendors the same flawed way. They audit the roadmap, assess the integrations, and negotiate the contract. They rarely ask enough how the vendor will be embedded in their operations after go-live, and what discipline that ongoing partnership requires. 

Finger Lakes Nurse Honor Guard gives late nurses a final tribute Democrat and Chronicle; by Mike Murphy; 9/21/26 As Ruth Benjamin was getting ready to retire after more than 50 years in nursing, two of her colleagues passed away. ... Nursing is a calling and a way of life, Benjamin said by way of explanation, and many like her and her colleague gave everything they had to their profession. ... After some research, Benjamin founded the Finger Lakes Nurse Honor Guard, which celebrates its third anniversary in October. The all-volunteer honor guard ensures that late nurses are recognized, in a similar way that honor guards pay tribute to late military or first responders. ... The service is free.Editor's Note: Though this article is behind a paywall, you can learn more about this inspirational Finger Lakes Nurse Honor Guard from their website.

IBM study finds 60% of employees worry AI is eroding critical thinking skills Complete AI Training; 9/21/26 A new IBM study finds that 60% of employees worry AI is eroding their skills, with critical thinking cited most often as declining. The research, released September 21, 2026, surveyed 1,500 CHROs and 8,800 employees globally, revealing a gap between the skills HR leaders say AI demands and what workers prioritize. While 71% of CHROs identify the ability to supervise, validate and override AI outputs as the workforce's most essential skill, only 29% of employees rank judgment as important. At the same time, CHROs cite critical thinking (57%) and human judgment (48%) as among the most important workforce capabilities.

Fionnuala Crowley on the palliative care gap in oncology: with specialists in short supply, oncology nurses can play a larger role Medpage Today; by Jeff Minerd; 9/18/26 Because many patients with cancer are not receiving adequate palliative care from specialists, primary oncology care teams may need to step up to fill the gap, said authors of a "Comments and Controversies" article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. "Even if cancer centers have palliative care services, the capacity of these services is often insufficient," Fionnuala Crowley, MD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and colleagues wrote. Furthermore, research suggests that the need for palliative care specialists is outpacing supply and there will be serious shortages by 2040, the team added. 

The role of hospice and palliative care in addressing climate changeAmerican Journal of Hospice & Palliative Medicine; by Erik S. Carlson, Nisha Shah, Jill Denny,  Aldebra Schroll, Daniel Mahoney, Sarah Schear, Kate Jennings, Collins Uzuegbu, David Harris, Bhargavi Chekuri, Cecilia Sorensen, Janet Bull, Chris Jones; 8/26Climate change is a defining global health challenge of our time, acting as a threat multiplier that erodes decades of health gains and worsens social inequities. People living with serious illness, the population served by Hospice and Palliative Care (HaPC) professionals, are particularly vulnerable to these impacts. While leading health organizations have acknowledged the public health implications of climate change, HaPC has remained largely absent from this discourse. This narrative review and framework proposal situates the field’s competencies within the growing climate and health literature and identifies avenues through which HaPC can contribute to addressing climate change. We argue that HaPC professionals — drawing on strengths in serious illness communication, interdisciplinary collaboration, and person-centered care — are uniquely positioned to advance equitable climate adaptation and mitigation at the individual, organizational, and societal levels.

59% of health care workers say they will look for a new job in the next year, and employers guess 39% Physicians Practice; by Austin Littrell; 9/16/26 The 2026 Healthcare Workforce Barometer measures the gap between what practice leaders think their staff want, and what staff say they want. Fifty-nine percent of U.S. health care workers say they are likely to look for job openings, interview for or switch to a new role in the next year, according to the 2026 Healthcare Workforce Barometer released Wednesday by The Harris Poll. Employers surveyed alongside them estimated that 39% of their own staff would. Forty-two percent of employees said they are likely to look outside their organization; employers put it at 32%. ... Roughly 40% of the employee sample are physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners or physician assistants; approximately 60% work in other patient-facing roles.

Your culture isn't what you say—it's what you tolerate | part one Teleios Collaborative Network (TCN); by Chris Comeaux; 9/926 Your organization’s culture isn’t defined by the values hanging on the wall—it’s defined by the behaviors leaders allow to continue. In Part One of Your Culture Isn't What You Say—It's What You Tolerate, host Chris Comeaux sits down with Tom Foster, President of Foster Learning Corporation and author of Premeditated Culture: The Consequences of What We Tolerate, for a compelling examination of how organizational culture is actually created.  Foster challenges a common leadership assumption: culture begins with defining what an organization believes. Instead, he argues that leaders should start by identifying the specific behaviors they want to see—because beliefs, values, customs, and ultimately culture become visible through what people actually do.

Narrative review of the US specialty palliative nursing workforce 2025: Measurement for now and the futureJournal of Pain & Symptom Management; by Susan Lysaght Hurley, Morgan E Murphy, Marian Grant, Caitlin Brennan, Joanne Reifsnyder, Joan G Carpenter; 8/26A robust, expertly trained nursing workforce is needed to care for over 13 million people living with serious illness in the United States (US). Workforce data remain limited due to the diversity of nursing roles in hospice and palliative care. No comprehensive estimate exists for the broader palliative nursing workforce; however, a 2024 national survey estimated 56,619 registered nurses working in hospice. Palliative nursing education was not formally integrated into US nursing curricula until 2021 with the AACN publication of The Essentials, and only 12 healthcare organizations offer specialty nurse residency or fellowship programs. The National Board for Certification of Hospice Nurses was established in 1992 in the US and awarded the first certification to registered nurses in 1994; in 2025 nearly 12,000 nurses are certified.