With the chronic nursing shortage quickly becoming a crisis, hospitals are more inclined to open their wallets to fill those positions.
According to an annual report from Avant Healthcare Professionals, 67% of chief nursing officers and hiring managers are offering sign-on bonuses for new hires, and 57% say they’re improving their pay packages. Before the pandemic, only 28% said they were improving those pay packages.
For its report, Avant surveyed more than 100 senior health care leaders from various systems throughout the United States during February and March.
Why such a large increase in incentives? Because, in addition to a growing nursing shortage, anywhere from 34% to 41% of nurses said they are considering leaving the profession in the next year.
Many of these health care providers cited burnout and other mental health issues caused by the pandemic as their reason for changing careers.
In addition to increasing monetary incentives, the Avant survey found, hospitals are hoping recent graduates (87%) and staffing agencies (69%) will be able to fill the RN openings.
A third of respondents said they will have more than 25 RN vacancies this year, and a quarter said they expect to have more than 100 openings. Last year, only 11% of respondents said they had 100 RN jobs to fill.
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