• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Web site spotlight: A new spin on nurse recruitment and retention

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, July 24, 2008

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education!

Regardless of what the future holds for healthcare and hospitals, most experts agree that recruiting and retaining enough employees will take a lot of change, which is something that healthcare isn't always good at. So nurse managers need to change the way they look at staffing. Making it a point to talk about people-and not just systems and processes-in meetings might be a good place to start. Many healthcare professionals have changed the way they talk about their staff and how they hire. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• "We don't own them." Gone are the days when facilities could cage their nurses in one department because they feared another facility would "steal" their nurses. Today, smart facilities have learned that they don't own their nurses; so, if they don't offer experience and learning opportunities, other organizations will.
• "They don't always have to be nurses." How many nurses does it take to run a hospital? It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but some organizations have discovered that they don't need as many nurses as they once thought. Forward-thinking hospitals are using nursing assistants, other staff, even family to take on roles that don't require a nursing degree.
• "Newspaper want ads don't work." Your next good employee isn't sitting home with a newspaper and a highlighter. Today's candidates are online, in social networks like Facebook, and writing blogs, so that's where your want ads should be.

Editor's note: This excerpt was taken from the Reading Room at www.StrategiesForNurseManagers.com. Get a free trial membership that will give you 30 days to test drive all the exciting features on the Web site.

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education!

• Comment
• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive

Comments