Four Steps to Building a Future-Ready Health Care Workforce

We were at a crossroads, as we confronted the same workforce crisis affecting most other hospitals across the country.

A state health care workforce survey had highlighted stark realities, particularly for nursing positions, which had been experiencing skyrocketing high vacancy and turnover rates.  While hospitals have always tried to ensure that salaries and benefits are competitive, the study found that a significant problem resulted from the lack of eligible applicants and inflexible schedules.  These schedules, though long considered a necessary sacrifice in health care, were seen as increasingly incompatible with the lifestyle preferences of the younger members of the workforce. 

We could either fight this trend or adapt.  We chose to adapt.

We have embraced a philosophy that balances strengthening employee retention with developing new talent.  “Growing our own” is our guiding principle because consistency in our hospital staff fosters a productive and positive environment for individual advancement and helps build desperately needed capacity. 

Retention also creates an inherently stronger culture.  For many workers, continual transition among the staff signals chaos and disorder, and causes stress.

Growing our own means developing our team members by providing training, skills-development and support to enable them to ultimately operate at the highest level of their capabilities.  If we hire an LPN, we will provide them with a career path and training to become an RN, if they choose, and then support them through the journey as they get a Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing and even the graduate education that will enable them to become a nurse practitioner or to take on another advanced role in nursing.

More hospitals can grow their own.  Here are the four pillars that I believe are essential to doing so.

Cross-Training Builds Capacity

Surgical technologists – sometimes called operating room technicians – are essential for performing surgeries.  A single surg tech that calls in sick or departs their role with minimum notice can severely complicate the surgery schedule in a smaller to mid-size hospital.  We have begun a program of cross-training our OR nurses, so that they can function in the surg tech role.  If, for example we have a sudden vacancy, we can bring in an added OR nurse that is also a trained surg tech, avoiding the need to: cancel surgeries, create inefficiency in our operation, and make patients’ lives more difficult.  Cross-training has an added benefit: our professionals enjoy developing new skills that add value to their portfolio.

Forge Strong Educational Partnerships

We are always seeking to grow our academic relationships, not only with nursing and health sciences programs at area colleges, but with technical and vocational high schools.  These schools are highly advanced in the technical training they provide and many partner with community colleges or colleges and universities so that students graduate with college training and credits.  We now have a built-in pipeline of young workers who may start as medical assistants or phlebotomists and then we train them to move up the career ladder to become technologists and nurses.  By creating meaningful internship programs, these graduates begin their work here even more prepared; the learning curve is greatly minimized.

Champion Mental Health and Prevent Burnout

Workplace stress and violence continually undermine staff.  They lead to vacancies and turnover which increases everyone’s workload.  I know this having been a nurse on the unit.  We have prioritized employee mental health through measures like stabilizing shift schedules because we recognize that constantly changing night and day shifts disrupt our employees’ sleep patterns and overall well-being.  We encourage employee wellness programs at every turn and frequently remind staff that they are never alone – help is always available. 

Embrace Flexibility for a Balanced Workforce

Flexibility is key.  Our employees expect – and deserve – a work-life balance and we are meeting this need.  We offer training during the workday to accommodate different schedules.  While many hospitals have increased wages to retain staff, the survey referenced above found fewer have embraced flexible work schedules, which is so desired among employees. 

We had to get away from our traditional beliefs around workforce, including compensation, benefits, incentives, and scheduling, and we had to think in a more linear way about employee advancement.  Why can’t today’s medical assistant be tomorrow’s nurse practitioner?  The only obstacle is old thinking, and that is what we are working to overcome.

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