I think this is an assumption we have to accept. The implication is that there are not enough nurses. Which means we need to protect the ones we have, and incentivize people to join. And we need to be creative / strategic / tactical about it because it is not a problem we can just throw money at (and as you mentioned, the money doesnt exist anyway).

Step 1: protecting the nurses we still have.

a) Increase denial of care. Nursing seems to be in need of triage. Or rather, "the system" needs to bear responsibility for triage instead of putting the weight on nurses and simply forgiving them for reasonable mistakes as a result of being overloaded

b) Reduced workload for nurses. Formalize the maximum acceptable workload for a nurse. Maybe provide compromised solutions that patients can agree to for any work beyond the maximum (less documentation, less liability, etc - an acceptance akin to treating a soldier on the battlefield. ie "do whatever you can, i'd rather something than nothing")

c) Increase usage of care workers (cheaper workers that RN's can delegate some responsibilities to)

d) Make a public awareness of how loaded a healthcare locations workforce is (so patients can self-manage in the moment; ie. my urgent care is very busy right now, let me go a couple towns over)

Step 2: Incentivize new nurses

a) Measure how many RN's exist that are not working as nurses. Do a case study to see what would bring them back

b) promote the profession to the youth like we did for STEM in the 2000's

c) reduce training needs. break apart the responsibilities of an RN and group them by categories that non-RN's / care workers can become certified in. allow RN's to delegate more work to "nursing category specialists" like IV management, medical history relevance, cleaning up shit, covid testing, etc. (whatever categories make sense)

Step 1 will support step 2, as it will be easier to recruit new nurses if nurses are better protected.

the important thing to remember is that we cannot control the demand on the healthcare system. We need to protect that system from collapsing if demand becomes too high. We must also provide a means for providing some treatment instead of no treatment in situations where full treatment is not possible due to excessive demand.

Personally, I think we coddle patients way too much. I understand wanting to protect people from their own stupidity, but we really need to stop trying to make the healthcare system a pleasant customer service experience. Let them be busy level-4 service technicians who do not have time for our bullshit.

Hire a much cheaper dedicated friendly person to provide friendly interaction. have them relay anything medically relevant if it pops up. Let them be the first person to show up to the room and decide if a nurse is really necessary, etc.

Basically, i think we need to evolve / progress RN's to be more like Doctors and prop up a less qualified class of healthcare worker underneath the RN's