Working to Attract Nurses to Our Team

Nurses are the backbone of a hospital. We are blessed at GBMC with an outstanding nursing staff. Like all other hospitals, however, we are having a difficult time having enough nurses to get the job done. We were already entering a shortage before the pandemic and COVID-19 only made it worse. The shortage has triggered a “call to the market” as salaries have gone up, and it will only be a matter of time before the supply of nurses catches up to the demand for them.

But what can we do in the meantime? We need to work to make GBMC the best place for a nurse to work so we can keep the nurses we have and attract nurses from other organizations. 

Every two weeks, I spend an hour welcoming our new people at employee orientation. My task at orientation is to begin to enroll our new colleagues in our vision. I was so pleased to see so many nurses at this week’s orientation.  

Our new Chief Nursing Officer, Angie Feurer, MSN, RN, NEA-BC; has been working with our Chief Human Resources Officer, Anna-Maria Palmer; and our Vice President of Marketing and Philanthropy, Jenny Coldiron; and their teams on creative ways to increase our nursing workforce. They have created a campaign titled “Discover the GBMC Difference” as a way to highlight the uniqueness of GBMC HealthCare. The photo (left) gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the recent recording of television spots that will start to air early next month. We also will distribute this message through various social media avenues, like Facebook and LinkedIn, and our employees can help us by sharing these posts with their social networks.

Also, we have restructured our supplemental positions so that nurses will be paid more according to their years of experience and will get increased rates for committing to work more supplemental shifts. This is allowing us to invest in our own nurses to take care of our patients rather than relying on agency nurses.  

In addition, we are rewarding our employees for assisting with our recruiting efforts . Employees can receive a $5,000 bonus for referring a full-time hospital bedside nurse who is hired at GBMC, and they can receive $2,500 for a part-time bedside nurse. At Gilchrist, we are offering a $2,000 referral bonus for day-shift nurses and a $4,000 referral bonus for night-shift nurses. Human Resources continues to attend career fairs at all area colleges and universities that train nurses. 

We are committed to ensuring that all GBMC nurses are compensated fairly. We offer many benefits to our nurses, including nursing scholarships, a loan repayment program, tuition prepayment for continuing education, and a last semester repayment program. GBMC has adopted a professional excellence model that allows nurses to learn and grow within their specialty and allows them to focus their interests on one of three tracks: quality and safety, education, or administration. 

Our healthcare system benefits from a talented and engaged nursing workforce, and we will continue to do whatever we can to attract and retain our nurses.