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Editor's
Note
I have received many letters from nurses struggling to find appropriate avenues to return to clinical nursing. Whether their children have entered school or they have not found the rewards in other work settings, they have made a tentative but conscious decision to return to clinical nursing at the bedside. They may be lacking only a little nudge. One letter in particular, sent by a still young and enthusiastic nurse, struck me: She had been absent from the workforce for just two years, and found herself unable to find full-time employment because she was "out of date" and it "would take too much effort to orient." She recounted the many disappointing conversations she'd had with nurse recruiters, managers and other colleagues. Amazingly, she lived in a community in the Central Valley that statistically has the lowest number of RNs per capita in California. Yet, she could not find anyone willing to hire her, to take a chance. If I could, I would have hired her in a moment. Sad and frustrated, she now is considering other employment options. The challenge of providing nurses with the emotional support and clinical knowledge to return to the active clinical workforce has been a concern whenever our supply of nurses falls short of the need within our health care delivery system. Re-entry programs are expensive, time-consuming and require the strong commitment of both the participant and the sponsoring hospital or educational institution. Few hospitals have the resources to offer a "refresher program" on their own. The California Board of Registered Nursing Web site, www.rn.ca.gov, lists 10 RN refresher programs throughout the state. All are associated with educational institutions and, unfortunately, none were near this nurse. Some have had trouble keeping classes full and most lack adequate resources to effectively market and attract re-entry nurses. Measuring long-term retention of re-entry nurses is difficult at best. However, the most critical resources in successful RN re-entry are what we all can help with. They are the support, guidance and caring attitude of hiring managers and RN colleagues, and receptive work environments. Whether the gap in experience is two years or 20, we need to embrace those nurses who want to return to bedside care. While statistics in California prove that the number of potential re-entry nurses may be small, every little bit helps. If only 1 percent of our RN workforce could be enticed and embraced back to the bedside, that would equal about 50 percent of the number of new grads we reap annually from our woefully under-resourced nursing education system in California. For those RNs who have had their noses down, with hearts and hands busy in the work of patient care for the past few years, I imagine that you could use a breather. So squeeze a moment out of your busy day, look around, and see if there is a nurse nearby who is itching to join you at the bedside. Then take that nurse under your wing and be their champion. Walk them into your employer's recruitment office and offer to be their sponsor. I am a great believer in the benefits of perspective. Sometimes, we can't see the forest for the trees. So I'll predict that our re-entry nurses have something important to give us in this experience as well. Give them your support and maybe you will rekindle their passion for nursing as well as refresh your own. Adaptation is
an important skill in such a fast-paced world. Perhaps one of nursing's
future competencies is to be able to move in and out of the direct
care workforce with fluidity and ease, as well as the support of
our peers. Given all the changes that have affected nursing practice,
regardless of where we have been working, perhaps we could all use
a little "re-entry."
What
do you think?
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NEWS
AND TRENDS | CAREER
CENTER | EDUCATION
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