Joe Ann Clark, the executive director of the Louisiana State Nurses Association, said she gets recruiting calls every day from hospitals across the country desperate to hire away as many of New Orleans' roughly 13,000 displaced nurses as they can.
With the nation facing a nursing shortage, Clark is struggling to keep nurses in Louisiana so they can return to work if and when the decimated health care system is rebuilt. But it has not been easy. One California hospital is offering $42 an hour and a $13,000 signing bonus, she said.
"My gracious," said Clark, a retired nurse. "It's hard to compete with that."
New Orleans civic leaders and inside observers fear that the near destruction of the city's vibrant university system and the reluctance of an emerging biotechnology industry to return will further extend Louisiana's brain drain. And this time, many fear their city won't recover.
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