Nursing Industry Expanding Incentives To Find New Hires

By John Voket

After Alaska, Connecticut has the worse nurse shortage problem in the nation, according to a 2008 study released by Connecticut Hospital Association. At the time of the study’s completion, there were 23,500 nurses in the state, 6,000 short of the ideal number.

But in 13 years, Connecticut’s gap will mushroom to 22,400 nurses as the number of working nurses shrink to 15,000. In other parts of the country, where the shortages are statistically lower, applicants for nursing jobs are still so scarce that recruiters have been forced to get increasingly inventive.

The Associated Press reported this week that it might take more than just more nursing teachers and loan forgiveness programs to lure students into the nursing profession. Companies like Michigan-based Residential Home Health, which provides in-home nursing for seniors on Medicare, lavished registered nurses and other health care workers with free champagne and a trivia contest hosted by game-show veteran Chuck Woolery. Prizes included a one-year lease for a 2009 SUV, hotel stays, and dinners.

“We’re committed to finding ways to creatively engage with passive job seekers,” said David Curtis, president of the Madison Heights-based company.

Recruiters like Mr Curtis may have little choice. The longstanding US nurse shortage has led to chronic understaffing that can threaten patient care and nurses’ job satisfaction, and the problem is expected to worsen.

Longstanding Trends

The shortage has been operating since World War II on an eight- to ten-year cycle, industry experts say. Each time the number of nurses reaches a critical low, the government adds funding and hospitals upgrade working conditions. But as the deficit eases, those retention efforts fade and eventually the old conditions return, often driving nurses into other professions.

“We recently had a hiring event where, for experienced nurses to interview — just to interview — we gave them $50 gas cards,” said Tom Zinda, the director of recruitment at Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare in the Milwaukee-area city of Glendale. “We really try to get as creative as we can. It’s a tough position to fill.”

Recruiters across the country have tried similar techniques, offering chair massages, lavish catering, and contests for flat-screen TVs, GPS devices, and shopping sprees worth as much as $1,000.

Even strong salaries are not doing the trick. Registered nurses made an average of $62,480 in 2007, ranging from a mean of $78,550 in California to $49,140 in Iowa, according to government statistics. Including overtime, usually abundantly available, the most experienced nurses can earn more than $100,000.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts about 233,000 additional jobs will open for registered nurses each year through 2016, on top of about 2.5 million existing positions. But only about 200,000 candidates passed the Registered Nurse licensing exam last year, and thousands of nurses leave the profession each year.

Several factors are in play: a lack of qualified instructors to staff training programs, lack of funding for training programs, difficult working conditions, and the need for expertise in many key nursing positions.

Cheryl Peterson, the director of nursing practice and policy for the Maryland-based American Nurses Association, said employers must raise salaries and improve working conditions.

“The wages haven’t kept up with the level of responsibility and accountability nurses have,” said Ms Peterson, whose organization represents nurses’ interests. Chronic understaffing means nurses are overworked, she said, and as burned-out nurses leave, the situation spirals for the colleagues they leave behind.

Some hospital departments where experience is vital, such as the emergency room or intensive-care unit, simply cannot hire newly minted nurses. So managers in those areas have even fewer staffing choices.

Instructors Still Scarce

Nurses qualified to teach aspiring nurses are scarce chiefly because they can make at least 20 percent more working at a hospital, experts said.

“It can be hard to turn down that extra money,” said Robert Rosseter, the associate executive director of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing in Washington, D.C.

Many recruiters have looked for employees overseas, and about one-fourth of the nurses who earned their licenses in 2007 were educated internationally, most in the Philippines and India. Some health organizations go out of their way to recruit as many nurses as possible even when they are overstaffed.

As far back as 2004, Connecticut realized the shortage of nurses was reaching a critical stage. That year, the state established its Connecticut nursing faculty incentive program administered by the Office of Workforce Competitiveness (OWC). The program provided grants, within available appropriations, to higher education institutions that worked with hospitals to:

1. establish or expand nursing education programs that qualify people to teach or train nursing students enrolled in a bachelor’s or registered nurse (RN) certification program or

2. encourage those who already have those qualifications to serve as full- or part-time faculty members at these institutions.

Connecticut’s Department of Public Health received $375,000 last year, and will again this year, to support initiatives to address nursing and allied health workforce shortages. These initiatives can include a faculty scholarship program, a nursing faculty student loan program, grants to higher education institutions for faculty positions, a recruitment and retention campaign to promote awareness of nursing and allied health careers, and support for an allied health workforce policy board.

The nursing faculty student loan program would provide loans and loan forgiveness to state residents who pursue a master’s or doctoral degree from an accredited nursing program in the state and agree to engage in nursing instruction in an approved state nursing training program.

Also, the budget provided funding of $125,000 in 2008 and again in 2009 to the DPH to establish a loan forgiveness program for historically underrepresented students pursuing nursing careers.

Associated Press material was incorporated into this report.