Unfortunately, hospitals no longer enjoy the status of most favored employers. Recruitment efforts should reflect the new reality that hospitals are competing for workers. Hospitals’ recruiting efforts should acknowledge the findings of a recent state Board of Health report that individuals from minority communities could be a rich source of personnel. However, hospitals need to go further by considering gender and disability in their recruiting strategies. Hospitals should not create separate programs for diverse populations, but should work to develop inclusive programs.

Much work remains to be done with respect to successful recruitment across traditional gender differences in health care workers. Successful recruiting will involve making the health professions appealing to male workers. Recruiting men into professions such as nursing, at similar rates as women, would go a long way to developing the workforce. A model for success is the significant increase of male flight attendants — a profession that began with women trained as nurses. The military has also had success bringing men into its nursing corps by focusing on the job rather than gender.

Hook Them When They Are Young

Hospitals need to do their part to ensure students are exposed to careers in the health professions from elementary school through college. Students also must be made aware of the types of careers available to them in health care. They should learn about laboratory personnel and health information technology as well as nurses and doctors.

A recent survey shows that young people are ignorant of the opportunities and challenges health care careers offer. Their knowledge continues to be based on outdated stereotypes and information based on erroneous assumptions. As an industry, hospitals still depend on word of mouth recruitment to reach the next generation. This practice dramatically limits the opportunity to reach a wide pool of diverse applicants. Another important consideration is that the employees providing word of mouth information are increasingly unhappy with their work. Workers in a system under siege do not tell happy stories, but stories of struggling in the trenches.

Grow Your Own

Hospitals that wish to staff themselves successfully should invest in building their workforce from within their own communities. The need to train workers from the local community is particularly crucial in rural areas where it can be difficult to recruit from the outside. For rural hospitals to be successful in their efforts at “growing their own,” education and training opportunities must be made available in rural areas. Education programs centered in urban areas tend to produce graduates who stay in urban areas and are reluctant to move to rural areas.