It wasn’t Covid that created healthcare shortages. The pandemic sure didn’t help things, but the problem began years earlier. The true issue? Nurses were leaving the profession or retiring, and not enough people were coming up through the ranks to replace them.
It was—and still is—a recruitment problem. To fix the issue, schools need to find not just more students, but potential healthcare workers who have what it takes to go the distance. Right now, almost half of all new nurses leave the profession within five years. That isn’t sustainable. In this article, we take a look at what qualities guidance counselors and college recruiters should look for when seeking out new nursing school candidates.
We also take a look at ways to present the career so that it is appealing.
Identifying the Right Students
While each kid will ultimately decide for themselves if they want to go into a healthcare career, high-aptitude students will have a certain set of qualities.
- Compassion.
- Clear communication.
- Educational aptitude.
Nursing is mentally strenuous, and it helps enormously to be an effective student. Still, that does not mean that schools should only approach students at the top of the class. Students with a commitment to learning, and the right set of soft skills can be great fits for the profession.
Making the Sell
Ok, so that’s how to identify someone with the potential to be a good nurse. How can colleges make the sell? There are several key benefits that might attract students to a career in nursing.
- Higher than average pay- Nurses do not necessarily get rich, but they won’t be poor either. Their income is competitive and there are opportunities to increase it even further by pursuing specialized certifications or advanced degrees.
- Meaningful work- While high school students may not fully understand the importance of doing work that matters to them on a personal level, it’s still a worthwhile feature of the job to emphasize. More and more people are leaving their original careers to work in fields that they find more impactful. Healthcare, education, social work. Emphasizing the importance of choosing a job that feels impactful to people at a young age may reduce instances of midlife career transitions.
- Flexibility- This is admittedly a complicated benefit. If you ask ten working nurses about how flexible they think their job is you might well get ten very different answers. Here’s what is true: Most floor nurses work three shifts a week. In many cases, they can choose when those shifts are. The hours remain punishing, but that element of choice makes the whole situation more bearable for some people.
It is important to emphasize the hard things with the good things. The idea is to funnel in more “qualified,” candidates. We use this phrase the way marketers do: people who will not only enroll in a healthcare education but also complete it, and go on to work a long, successful career. Many people are attracted to the idea of becoming a nurse because they want to help others, or simply because they are interested in working in healthcare and this is the route that appeals to them the most.
However, when they begin their careers, they find that the pressure and emotional wear and tear are too much for them. While this is a very valid response to the pressures of healthcare work, it’s better to figure out how you will respond to difficult aspects of a job before you have spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to obtain a qualification for it.
Healthcare shadowing opportunities can help with this. High school guidance counselors or parents might consider encouraging students who are interested in healthcare careers to participate in job shadowing opportunities at the local hospital. This can be a good way to get a sense of what it is like to work in a healthcare setting, without any of the pressure or responsibility.
Emphasize the Options
It’s also not a bad idea to help high school students understand how many different career options there are in the world of healthcare. Doctors and nurses, sure. Also, administrators, technicians, home health professionals, paramedics, physical therapists.
You can even apply marketing or finance skills to the world of healthcare. There are so many different ways to help hospitals do what they need to. High school students should at least have a partial idea of what options lay ahead for them.
Rethinking Healthcare
Close your eyes and imagine a nurse. If the person you pictured in your head wasn’t a middle-aged white woman, you deserve a pat on the back. Unfortunately, the real world is not quite as diverse as your imagination.
The overwhelming majority of nurses are white females. There are two obvious problems with this:
- Limited talent pool: White females make up only a limited segment of the population. To get more people interested in healthcare work, it is important to challenge assumptions about who can participate.
- Deprived of Opportunity: The assumption that nursing jobs are only for white females also deprives many people of good professional opportunities. Healthcare workers enjoy competitive salaries and fulfilling work. In an ideal world, access to these types of careers would be equitable.
Patient outcomes also suffer from a lack of diversity. Studies show that minorities—particularly black women—consistently experience a higher rate of complications during routine care. One of the main issues is communication.
Healthcare workers sometimes struggle to interact productively with people who come from backgrounds radically different than their own. This has created a world in which black women have almost three times as high a maternal mortality rate than white women.
It’s only fair to say that there are multiple factors contributing to this statistic. Minorities also have less access to preventative care which can play a huge role in overall outcomes.
Still, adequate representation in nursing can help alleviate the problem while also putting more wealth in minority communities.
Universities can help with this by making sure that their recruitment materials include a wide range of different communities.
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