Shortages in nursing nationwide — and globally — are predicted to intensify as populations age, but the problem might not affect all parts of the healthcare industry equally.
Jeffra Kinniard, RN, director of operations at Parkview SurgeryOne in Fort Wayne, Ind., told "Becker's ASC Review Podcast" that her ASC has had no trouble attracting applicants for nursing positions.
Note: This is an edited excerpt. Listen to the full podcast episode here.
Question: How do you handle the competition for nursing talent?
Jeffra Kinniard: [Our] surgery center is rather heavily RN-oriented, as I think many are. We've always been able to recruit excellent nurses, and I think we're in a unique position because we're part of a health system. We can keep up with that through a myriad of things that are offered.
More people are starting to understand who we are as ASCs. Certainly the no on-call, no weekend status appeals to many people who are maybe later on in their careers. So it creates a nice lifestyle.
We've invested in some things like employee assistance programs and a calm app — it's an app on your phone that requires a membership. So we pay for the membership and it gives our coworkers a variety of tools in order to cope with anxiety. We are developing career ladders to help with [career progression].
I often hear from my colleagues that [shortages] are issues they're worried about, but I really do find that this push to outpatient has allowed a lot of people to rethink, and really [working at an ASC is] something they didn't even know existed. So we're getting a lot of interest for nursing staff.
I think these are going to be really great times for surgery centers and nursing.