Necessity nurses creativity
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Associated Press
TOM GANNAM / Associated Press File
Sheila Jones, a clinical simulation facilitator, demonstrates to nursing students how to draw blood at Goldfarb School of Nursing at Barnes-Jewish College in St. Louis.
Milwaukee — Please accept a high-paying job with us. In fact, just swing by for an interview and we’ll give you a chance to win cash and prizes.
Sounds too good to be true, especially in an economy riddled with job cuts in nearly every industry. But applicants for nursing jobs are still so scarce that recruiters have been forced to get increasingly inventive.
Recruiters may have little choice. The long-standing U.S. nurse shortage has led to chronic understaffing that can threaten patient care and nurses’ job satisfaction, and the problem is expected to worsen.
The shortage has been operating since World War II on an eight- to 10-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.
“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 Glendale, Wis.
Recruiters across the country have tried similar techniques, offering chair massages, lavish catering and contests for flat-screen TVs.
Registered nurses made an average of $62,480 in 2007, according to government statistics. Including overtime, the most experienced nurses can earn more than $100,000.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts about 233,000 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 American Nurses Association in Silver Spring, Md., said employers must raise salaries and improve working conditions.
“The wages haven’t kept up with the level of responsibility and accountability nurses have,” Peterson said.
Chronic understaffing means nurses are overworked, she added.
Emergency rooms or intensive-care units cannot hire newly minted nurses. So managers in those areas have even fewer staffing choices.
Nurses qualified to teach aspiring nurses are scarce because they can make at least 20 percent more working at a hospital, experts said.
— This article is a reprint from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.