What are hospitals doing for recruiting new nurses?

[BeckyBrunker]

Just wondering what hospitals are doing to recruit new nurses to their facilities. Currently my hospital has been hiring travelers to help support the lack of nurses while new residents who take 4-6 months to orientate are being hired. Hoping to get some good ideas to help support a letter I'm writing to the President and VP of Nursing and Patient Care Services. Need your ideas. Also wondering what other hospitals are doing to help keep staff who are burnt out and working extra shifts because of being short staffed. Thanks in advance for all the comments.

[HippyDippyLPN]

It's so odd how its going both ways...some hospitals want nothing to do with new grads, others want to replace experienced staff with them...I never thought about newer nurses making less so some hospitals want to employ them in droves until I has my baby fall 2011 in a very high regarded hospital in our area. Every single nurse from L&D to the mother baby unit was definitely under 35, most my age, around 24-25. What was weird is that I said sure to nursing students being my nurse for the day and they were all in their 40's and 50's...it was like a alternate universe lol.

[Marshall1]

The hospitals around where I live do nothing other than post the open positions on some of the online job boards and on their web sites. None are recruiting new grads. Like previous posters, the HR contact at the hospital I worked for last said she receives 1000 (yes, 1000) on average a week of resumes/applications just for the nursing positions and when someone is hired in ANY position at this particular hospital it means they "beat out" at least 75 other people for the job. Employment in all areas is tough and nursing is no exception. The days of the employers having to beg are over - at least for now.

[Not_A_Hat_Person, RN]

In my area, only SNFs and ALFs hire new grads. The local hospitals want nurses with at least 2 years of experience in the area they're hiring for. Home health will take nurses with 1 year of experience.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

None of the healthcare facilities in my area are actively recruiting new grads. I live in a huge metro area with an oversupply of new grads, so every job opening posted generates several hundred applications without any extra recruitment efforts.

[Multicollinearity, BSN, RN]

I work at a remote, rural hospital. There are plenty of applicants even out in the middle of nowhere. My unit will not hire new grads - only RNs with one year of experience will be considered. I know of another rural hospital that will only hire BSN RNs with at least one year of experience. These kinds of requirements were unthinkable 10 years ago when the nursing shortage existed.

[SleeepyRN]

Oh I meant that as a sincere, truthful statement. My old floor lost close to 1/3 of its nurses in just over a year and every single nurse they've hired in that time was a new grad. Management claimed that "that's all that's out there" but a night shift nursing supervisor who had the inside scoop told us the truth one day- the hospital wants new grads because they're cheaper and don't realize they're being abused.

Now that I do home care, most of my patients come from that same hospital- I had a young adult patient who asked me one day why 90% of the nurses at said hospital seem like they're in their 20s. Because they are.

Oh, believe me. We new grads know we're being abused. But there are pretty much 2 types. Those who go through orientation and quit, and those who are desperate and will take the abuse to get the experience so they too can one day be experienced nurses.

There needs to be a balance of new grads and experienced nurses. If no new grads are ever hired, then there will eventually be no experienced nurses left once they retire. But what some hospitals are doing is just terrible. How sad that a nurse can work years to only be replaced by someone cheaper.

[anotherone, BSN, RN]

Where I lived no need to receuit for years. The rural area I went to also no longer recruits as they now get applicants from everywhere desperate for a job. Mostly only hire new grads . some shifts most experienced nurse has a year of experience. sometimes i do believe they can't really get anyone else. Some lts think the 50year olds have plenty of experience, in reality, the ones on my unit are way less experienced then some of the 20somethings. pretty much everyone is new, once they get a year of med surg off to "bigger and better things" with less ratios and more "prestige". we had a severe staffing shortage and the hospital diss not recruit. it used travelors and mandatory ot, eventually once the economy got really bad in surrounding states and elsewhere those rns started applying too. in school back in 2007-2009 I/my classmates were told to apply to texas, north dakota, wyoming montana, northern maine etc. . actually great advice for me! lol