As any parent will tell you, quality and proximity top the list in the search for child care. It’s no different for Angie Buckmeier, RN, program coordinator for cranial facial services at Medical City Dallas Hospital.

As a mother of two boys, a 6-year-old and a 4-month-old, Buckmeier wants a center that can provide infant care and still cater to her older son’s needs. She also would like it to be a little closer to home than the one they’re enrolled at now.

"I found a day care close by [to the hospital] that I was using, but the quality of care was not what I wanted," she said. "The day care I’m using now, the quality is good, but it’s 20 minutes away. It’s out of my way."

Buckmeier’s long commutes will end soon. In January, Medical City announced a deal with Children’s Choice Learning Centers Inc. to build a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week on-site child care center for employees’ children. When the center began to accept applications in March, Buckmeier was ninth in line.

"I’m excited. Mommy will be right next door," Buckmeier said. "It’s very reassuring."

Child care has become an important recruiting tool as hospitals across the nation face a nursing shortage. The goal? To keep parents in the workforce. A growing number of on-site childcare centers assure nurses they can work without worry and with their child just a few steps away.

Vital issue
"I would say [child care] is a big issue for nurses," said Lea Acord, Ph.D., RN, dean of the College of Nursing at Montana State University in Bozeman. "It’s still predominantly a female profession, and because women are still the primary caregivers, you find a need in the workplace to support and take care of the kids."

Medical City is not alone in addressing the issue. St. Mary’s Medical Center in Evansville, Ind., and Marian Medical Center in Santa Maria, Calif., have on-site childcare programs more than 10 years old, while other hospitals provide day care subsidies.

Still, Medical City offers a different approach. While the childcare center, scheduled to open in August or September, will be built on hospital land, Medical City will not run it.

That’s up to Children’s Choice, a company that specializes in nontraditional child care that will build and staff the center. In return, Medical City guarantees that it will fill 300 slots with children aged 6 weeks to 12 years old.

Round-the-clock care
Children’s Choice already boasts day care centers in several casinos, such as one in Las Vegas that the Medical City staff visited. The organization’s biggest selling point for hospitals is round-the-clock, 365-day care, a golden opportunity for children of second- and third-shift nurses.

"The focus groups that we employed said that one of our greatest needs was not being met," said Virginia Rose, Medical City vice president for human resources and ethics and compliance officer. "Child care is an issue for everyone ... but most definitely for nurses."

One already-popular feature of the center is a sick bay nurse to care for ill children, which means parents don’t have to miss work.

"I’ve lost a lot of money to sick days," said Geoffrey Skipper, an RN in the telemetry department. "I’m satisfied that this is filling a niche."

Irregular shifts, long hours and young children can be a difficult combination. Shelley Ziebell, RN, clinical manager of the emergency department at St. Mary’s, said she’s considered other jobs, but none that can match St. Mary’s in-house child care.

"One thing I never have to worry about is if my children are being taken care of," the mother of two said. "At work, things are going on in this department that I have to keep my mind on. I never worry about my kids—I know they are being taken care of, and I can always call if I have a question."

At Marian Medical Center, children’s center director Paula VanGalio has a staff of 17 to look after 52 children. She said most of the hospital parents are nurses.

"We have an advantage [over other day care centers]," VanGalio said. "We have a lot of support services from the hospital. We have dietitians, hospital linen service, payroll, a budget process that’s not just on a sheet of yellow paper. It’s been an advantage to be in a corporate setting. It’s an advantage for the children."

On-site day care centers are not a good fit everywhere, but hospitals still want to retain nurses by offering childcare options. Such is the case at Minnesota’s St. Cloud Hospital.

When the outside company that ran the hospital’s on-site center shut down, administrators worried that they could not provide a program of similar quality. Now, St. Cloud employees receive subsidies to use at predetermined, area childcare programs.

Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in Las Vegas uses a comparable system.

"We have a subsidy program available to all employees, and nurses make up a big part of those who use the subsidy," said Ann Lynch, Sunrise vice president of marketing and public relations. "Las Vegas is very spread out, and many nurses don’t live right around the hospital. Just getting to work takes 30 minutes, so we don’t have just one day care program where [employees] can use the subsidy."

Still, if Medical City nurses are any indication, on-site centers are a terrific retention tool.

"When I first came to the hospital, I asked [about on-site day care] and was told it was a possibility," Skipper said. "I was surprised and very glad that they actually did it."

If employers are interested in combating the nursing shortage, Acord thinks on-site centers are a good start.

"If employers are smart, what they’ll do is ask nurses what makes them want to work somewhere," she said. "They’ll find nurses put child care at the top."