Recruiting and retaining nursing staff

[CoffeeRTC, BSN, RN]

How are your facilities going about recruiting and retaining nurses? We've had a pretty stable staff for the last 6 months or so, but recently have had a few firings. Currently the only way that I have seen the administration try to hire folks is word of mouth and an help add in two newspapers for one day. Would you expect to get many prospective hires from that??? I've suggested in the past going to high schools with a nursing aid program, trade schools and local nursing schools and either posting an add or speaking with students at a careeer day type of thing. Any one try doing this? anyone know the cost of monster.com? I'd be more than willing to do this for my facility and told them really early to start looking for a replacement for me when I leave for maternity leave, but they just seem to think that the CNAs and nurses will keep doubling to fill the empty slots...one nurse has had between 40-50 hrs of OT on her last few checks...(she wants to work these hrs and makes the rest of us look bad when we don't)

Any ideas on how to find staff, besides the obvious..put an help wanted add in the newspaper?

[purplemania, BSN, RN]

we have tried advertising in other cities, Nurseweek, doing Fairs, going to schools---just about everything. Thankfully, our retention rate is up and we are not in as great a need, although we dream of experienced nurses wanting to relocate to a small town (75,000). We are 2 hr from Dallas, and this just ain't happen'. This year we began working with nursing schools more closely (exchanging ideas on how to transition from student to nurse, etc.). That has helped us a little. Our nurse extern program is a success and we are able to pick "the cream of the crop" from new grads. Our focus is now on retaining the good experienced nurses and re-training the ones who are not as good but who consider themselves experienced just because they have had their license a while. Does anyone have numbers on effective retention efforts? How much do they cost and what is the return?