The healthcare workforce is varied and multi-faceted, with professionals holding various roles, specialties and responsibilities. As a result, this diversity offers a range of challenges and discussions on how to address them.
This raises the question: What is missing from discussions about the healthcare workforce? Several executives shared their responses with Becker's, focusing on topics ranging from worker retention to the culture of healthcare.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Lauren De Simon Johnson. CHRO of Southcoast Health (New Bedford, Mass.): We need to pay more attention to how we retain our workforce. It's one thing to have all these avenues to staff our vacancies, but really, to think about it, that's not how we win the war on talent. We win the war by retaining the talent that we have. It's much easier to do that than it is to find new talent, especially in our market, which is not an urban market. So that's where we've been focused: on retention.
Based on our strategic plan, we've developed three pillars to support the plan. The most important pillar, the No. 1 pillar, and the one I'm most concerned about, is what we call "delighting our talent." It's not just satisfying our talent or ensuring our talent; it's delighting our talent. Those are very specific words we use because we want to convey that we're an employee-centric culture and that we have a great work environment. Of course, we have to prove that; we can't just say it. We put a lot of diversity, equity and inclusion strategies in place and have created a really inclusive and respectful environment where employees feel like they belong and have psychological safety. It's also about reducing friction throughout all the processes that are part of the employment lifecycle. For example, making sure that onboarding and orientation are smooth, easy and efficient. Employees that are happy make the patients happy; it's one and the same in my mind.
One of the other ways we focus on retention is by implementing a year-long, proprietary leadership development program that teaches all managers and above how to be good people leaders and how they are accountable for retaining their team members. We call this program "Lead More," which has been getting rave reviews. We're starting to see a shift in leadership behavior, with more attention being paid to retention.
We also created a new position called employee engagement and well-being manager. This person focuses solely on wellness programs, like our employee health management platform and "Wellness Wednesdays," where we offer free yoga and spinning classes. She also focuses on staff recognition events, our biggest and most prominent being our annual President's Award Program.
Additionally, we need to pay more attention to workplace violence, which has increased significantly since COVID. We've done some work in that area as well. We've created a patient code of conduct, so not only do we have an employee code of conduct now, but we also have a patient code of conduct that we live by. We've changed some of our policies to make them stronger and clearer around. When you have patients who are being violent or even just disrespectful, what can be done, and how should our employees, especially our nurses, handle patients like that? We also do a lot of training around workplace violence, how to be safe, and how to deal with difficult patients. So really focusing on that also creates the psychological safety that's so important to an employee working in a challenging environment. I think it just goes a long way when you really pay attention to that issue, and it makes people feel like, "My employer has my back, my employer values me and understands what I'm going through," and that helps with retention.
Retention is so important because turnover costs us so much money. The churn of hiring and people leaving is just very expensive. If we can keep people here and really crack the code on retention, then I think we have a better playing field to deal with these workforce challenges.
I'd say the other critical shortage we need to focus on is the shortage of nursing faculty. Time and again, you hear that our local colleges have to limit the number of students in the program because they don't have enough faculty to handle more than one class on a given topic. One of the things we're exploring is having our nursing leaders, especially, become faculty for the local college. We pay them as if they're working, so they're not losing anything, and they're not working extra hours. They're teaching during their work time. I think that would go a long way in building out the faculty and ensuring that as many people as possible who want to attend nursing school can do so.
Tim Plante, MSN, RN. CommonSpirit Health Central Region Chief Nursing Officer (Omaha, Neb.): Like many health systems over the last few years, CHI Health and CommonSpirit Health have put a large emphasis on the recruitment and retention of a strong workforce. What's becoming a new part of the conversation is how we can implement technology into our daily workflows and processes to enhance patient care and let our nurses, physicians, specialty staff, focus on what they do best — providing compassionate care to our patients.
CHI Health has implemented an innovative virtual nursing program at CHI Health CUMC — Bergan Mercy, CHI Health Lakeside, CHI Health Immanuel, serving 248 beds. This initiative pairs bedside nurses with virtual nurses, who provide remote support and assistance, enhancing patient care and freeing up bedside nurses. Virtual nurses are reviewing charts, checking on patients, coordinating with families, and facilitating discharge processes to allow bedside nurses more time for hands-on care.
Beyond technology, investing in training is crucial. This year, CommonSpirit Health selected CHI Health to help implement a new curriculum for our nurse residency training program. The curriculum invests even more into the workforce by training newly licensed nurses in the specialty they work in. For example, a new ICU nurse will receive specialized training to meet the unique needs of patients in intensive care. The program has helped bring CHI Health's first-year nursing retention rate to 95%.
However, the conversation shouldn't stop at technology and training. As a nonprofit Catholic healthcare organization, we are constantly asking how our core values can advance health for all people — including our employees. In a time when the healthcare industry is experiencing unprecedented financial challenges (i.e. reduced reimbursement rates with payers, increasing costs of labor and supplies), CommonSpirit and CHI Health continue to be empowered by our mission.
We focus on putting the "care" in "healthcare" for both our patients and staff. Our campus-based foundations have dedicated funds to help employees through hardship. We've also implemented support for mental health where employees can access it onsite during their shift. We have piloted a new employee assistance program model at CHI Health Immanuel to improve access to in-person care. It's our mission to make sure our employees are cared for with the same compassion they meet our patients with each day.
Brian Shockney. Senior Vice President of System Regional Operations for Indiana University Health (Indianapolis): My concerns that I have outside of just partnerships — getting more people to go to medical school, opening up graduate medical education slots, partnering so that we can get more nurses restored, therapists, imaging, all of those things — is the culture of healthcare. I've been in this business over 30 years; and in my career, I've slowly seen where we've transitioned from where physicians' children became physicians to where physicians' children were not enamored with healthcare and also were discouraged from coming into healthcare. And I think it's the same for others.
My wife and I both were in healthcare, and [none] of our three children have gone into healthcare. It's a noble profession. It is a mission-driven profession, and yet I think that we've made it a less-desirable profession — post-COVID specifically, but even prior to that. We've made it less desirable from not only just the way that it's talked about, looked at in the media, and talked about in the circles of healthcare and outside of healthcare, but also just the demands and the continuous changes in the industry. I believe it's an exciting field. It's very mission-driven, and we have to get back to where we were previously, where we're encouraging people to go into healthcare.
I believe [in] these investments we're making as nonprofits — investing in expanding nursing schools, pushing to get more GME spots for our residencies, our fellowships. We know that we've got medical schools graduating students who can't get into residencies, and so those are things that will help tremendously. But at the foundation of it all is to continue to grow the ability to have a message that healthcare is a noble profession and that people should go into that profession. We have some high school and junior high mentorship programs and other programs at IU Health where we interest our students in the future of healthcare. And those seem to be working, but we've got to continue that work and make sure that we pull people into the healthcare setting.