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Who better to speak on the wonders and joy that come with being a nurse than nurses themselves? To help recruit young people into the profession, we decided to share with them just how amazing nursing can be. And we let nurses do the talking.

According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), 75% of all hospital personnel vacancies are nursing positions, one out of every five working nurses is considering leaving the bedside in the next five years, and the demand for nurses in the future will increase due to the care needs of a rapidly aging population. The report appeared in a 2002 edition of Medical Ethics Advisor.

To address this shortage, we created a recruitment program with nurses explaining their decision to become an RN and how nursing has contributed to their personal and professional growth.

We reviewed current nursing recruitment tools available for high school students and felt there was something missing. Most of the tools we found described the importance of the nurse’s role in caring for patients in an age of advanced medical technology. These tools stressed both the technical aspects of nursing care and the career opportunities available. However, we felt there was something more that needed to be conveyed to high school
students interested in nursing. What keeps nurses in nursing? Is it the high-tech aspect of our job, or is it those memorable moments and the personal effect nursing has had on our lives?

We asked ourselves what qualities are important for a nurse to possess, and identified 13 that we felt exemplified nurses. We then interviewed 33 nurses we felt embodied these qualities, and asked them about their most memorable experiences as nurses and how being a nurse affected their personal lives.

A member of our group serves on the Board of Education for Newington, Conn., and recognized a need for a nursing recruitment program at an area high school. So, at the same time, we collected key information about our target group — third- and fourth-year high school students — including developmental tasks, such as career preparation, and how to effectively communicate with this age group.

We also collected demographic information about Newington in regards to gender and ethnicity. We wanted to create a program that used the actual words of nurses, but also reflected the diverse population of Newington.

We developed a nursing recruitment CD that displayed pictures of selected nurses accompanied by their quotes, read by a female narrator. The themes followed those we identified in the interviews. We chose a CD, instead of a video because of the increased availability of computers in classrooms and the convenience of this medium in a teaching environment. In March, we presented this program to nine junior and senior year high school students interested in pursuing a career in nursing.

Some students had internships scheduled for the following year at a local hospital to find out if nursing was the career for them, one was already accepted into a BSN nursing program; and one was currently applying for entry into a nursing program.

Feedback about the program from the students and the education staff was positive — “I liked hearing the effects of nursing from actual nurses,” and “This experience encourages me to become a nurse.”

This project brought our vision into reality by creating a nursing recruitment tool that uses the words of nurses to describe why they became nurses and an interactive program that presents the essence of nursing to high school students.

Working on the project also brought together three nurses who have learned from each other, taught each other, depended on each other, listened to each other and have made a difference in each other’s lives.

If this program encourages one more person to pursue a career in nursing, it has been a success.

Holly A. DeFeo RN, BSN is a clinical educator at New Britain General Hospital, Conn.; Maureen Hogan Klett RN, BSN is the supervising nurse consultant and Helen M. Centeno RN, MSN, MEd, is a nurse consultant, both at the Connecticut Department of Public Health. DeFeo and Hogan Klett are also enrolled at the University of Hartford.