Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1495475
28 NURSING SPOTLIGHT How Henry Ford rehired 25% of nurses who left during the pandemic By Mackenzie Bean and Erica Carbajal J ob flexibility is at the center of hospitals' and health systems' strategies to welcome back nurses who le during earlier stages of the COVID-19 pandemic — and some are seeing significant progress. As a priority for 2023, Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, PhD, RN, the newest president of the American Nurses Association, would like to see hospitals make consistent efforts to reach out to nurses who le or took a break. "Nurses le during some very stressful times and very hard times and we need to welcome them back," Dr. Mensik Kennedy told Becker's in January. "I would like to see metrics of people who are coming back now into the profession aer taking a break." About 2,000 nurses have le Detroit-based Henry Ford Health since 2020. Of those, 500 have returned. "About 1 in 4 is actually coming back to us aer they've gone off and either worked for travel agencies or tried something else," Eric Wallis, DNP, RN, chief nursing officer of Henry Ford Health, told Becker's. He credits that to offering nurses flexible opportunities and consistent outreach. Nursing leaders worked closely with Henry Ford Health's human resources team to design programs that would make it attractive for nurses to come back, whether through higher pay or the ability to work in different settings via the system's internal travel nurse program, Dr. Wallis said. e health system also created a new role, where nurses could choose to just work weekends. Via a texting campaign, the health system contacts nurses who have le in the last six months on a monthly basis and asks if they are interested in coming back, as well as informing them on the flexible opportunities available. Most health systems Becker's spoke with were unable to share concrete numbers on how many nurses have returned to their organizations. "It seems like we are more focused and have better data on who's leaving than who's coming back," said Kristin Ramsey, MSN, RN, senior vice president of quality at Chicago-based Northwestern Memorial HealthCare. "We really have a ways to go into making sure that we have good data." Many human resources systems are not able to identify and track individuals as former employees if they've been gone for a substantial amount of time, say a year or more, she said. Some nurses may also reenter the workforce with a different healthcare organization, which also clouds visibility into trends on their return to the workforce. Anecdotally, though, it appears nurses are returning. "As each week goes by, I'm shaking hands in orientation with folks that had le or maybe had gone part-time and realized they missed the work and calling of being a nurse," said Ms. Ramsey, who also serves as chief nurse executive of Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Northwestern Medical Group. Northwestern has primarily relied on mass emails to stay in touch with nurses who've le the organization and alert them of opportunities to return. Many of these openings are for "knowledge worker" roles that are less physically intensive than bedside positions and come as the system embraces innovative nursing models, such as tele-ICU care and virtual nursing. "ere might be an opportunity for those who le the marketplace because of the physicality of the work to find new and innovative ways to be nurses," Ms. Ramsey said. Nurse viewpoint: Mandatory staffing ratios are the wrong fight By Mackenzie Bean M andatory nurse staffing ratios are a temporary solution to a larger issue and will not bring about the respect the profession deserves, Kathleen Bartholomew, MN, RN, a national speaker and nurse advocate, wrote in an op-ed for Nurse.org. Instead, nurses should be advocating for charge nurses to have the authority to set ratios on an hourly basis and "get as many nurses as they request. Period," she said. In healthcare's current business model, the core focus is profit. Billing codes don't exist for being the only nurse who can get a patient to take his or her medication, or for intervening just in time to prevent a medical error, Ms. Bartholomew said. "Because the work we cherish has no monetary 'value' in the current business system, our self-esteem decreases, in- group arguing prevails, and we start measuring ourselves using the language of the dominant group: turn-around time, length of stay, and hours of care per patient day," she wrote. "This is why staffing ratios are the wrong fight. It's still about control." Ms. Bartholomew said the charge nurse is the only person in a healthcare organization who is qualified to decide staffing levels based on real-time patient acuity and staff members' experience and skills. These individuals should be the ones in control of setting staffing ratios, she argued. "By playing into ratios, we are still holding ourselves in an oppressed position because we are discounting our own ability to make this critical decision," she wrote. "If you are going to fight, fight for the real thing: your own autonomy and power." n