By Katherine Fung
Senior Writer
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The health care industry has been staring down the barrel of staffing shortages long before COVID-19, but the pandemic and its unprecedented demand for nursing support has upended the ways in which hospitals staff nurses.
On Wednesday, while discussing how health systems can turn travel nurses into full-time staff, industry leaders implored their colleagues to accelerate career pathways for nurses by partnering with higher education institutions.
Executives from Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey, OhioHealth in Ohio and Lown Institute in Massachusetts all joined Newsweek editor Aman Kidwai this week for the "Traveler to Teammate: Becoming a Hospital Where Nurses Choose to Stay" webinar.
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Over the 45-minute conversation, Dr. Regina Foley, the chief nursing executive and chief clinical transformation and integration officer at Hackensack Meridian Health, said that if health systems want to address the staffing challenges across the medical community, they need to "cultivate that workforce to come into health care as a career choice."
"It's no longer academia and service," Foley said. "There has to be a partnership there. Higher education is fragile throughout the country. It's a responsibility on our part to partner with higher ed to ensure that those faculty seats are filled, that the student seats get filled and that, certainly, those student nurses are successful with [National Council Licensure Examination] and come to us."
The NCLEX exam is required for licensing as a nurse in the U.S., Canada and Australia. Hackensack Meridian opened its own medical school, Hackensack University Medical Center, in 2018 and collaborates with Georgetown University through the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.
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On Wednesday, Foley emphasized that a "high-quality talent pipeline" from higher education to the health care industry doesn't have to look like a bachelor's degree, noting that not everyone is meant to study in that method. She argued that health systems need to do more than recruit and get nurses through the door, saying that Hackensack Meridian Health had found success in helping nurses with tuition, bonus programs and loan forgiveness.
"What makes the difference is what we're doing, within the facilities that nurses are practicing in," Foley said. "That's the differentiator."
She said that like the other panelists, her hospital system had seen agency nurses who stuck around even after the pandemic. The thing that kept them there was an environment, which Foley said made these nurses feel valued, respected and appreciated.
"We should not underestimate the power of culture," she added. "The power of where that stickiness is that a nurse is heard. They're autonomous. They're working to full extent to practice. They have leadership support. They can reach out and have their voices heard. [They're] respected by the medical community."
David Rutherford, senior advisor of HR transformation at OhioHealth, also called on nurses to identify the professional opportunities they are seeking and to make it known to leadership.
"If there's a job that you're interested in or if there is an experience that you are looking to have, ask your leader. Make sure that you're communicating what it is that you are looking for because I'm pretty confident there's an opportunity for you to either experience that within your own organization or your organization is willing to support you in how you get that experience," Rutherford said.
Rutherford, who is a nurse by trade, said that he recently moved into human resources to better understand how OhioHealth could better support nursing teams and make sure that everybody has the tools to be successful at the organization. He said while HR was not a department he saw for himself when he began his career, he is "really glad" that's where his "pathway has led to."
He called on nurses to gain new perspectives by tackling new responsibilities that may be daunting or out of their comfort zones. He used himself as an example, saying that when he first took an HR role, it took a lot for him to step back as the non-expert and listen to what people had to say.
"What was really great about that is I got to use that same perspective or same curiosity when talking with our [travel nurses], when trying to understand what that value proposition is for them... and really build out programs that made sense to them and made sense to our incumbents," Rutherford said.
"I was able to use my clinical background and my perspective to be able to help shape some programs that have been pretty cool," he said. "I've always believed that nurses should have a seat at the table... We have tremendous nurse leadership across the organization and I get to be a nurse at the HR table."
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