 Recruitment Campaign At Franklin
Square Bolsters Nurse Recruitment
For years, Franklin Square Hospital Center in Baltimore
employed nurse recruitment strategies that they felt produced average results.
So Ann Possidente, manager of nurse recruitment and retention in collaboration
with nursing management and staff took the hospital’s recruitment strategy
up a notch. After brainstorming with other hospital nurses, they decided to
launch a recruitment and retention program that involved all nurses in the
hospital. The idea sounds simple but it ended up with a recruitment rate of 72
new nurses in five months.
The recruitment campaign, started in December 2003, hung on
the notion that each of the 758 nurses in the hospital knows other nurses
outside of Franklin Square either through friendships, their communities, and
from nursing school. It involved getting nurses to think about friends and
family members they could recruit to the hospital.
The campaign also was designed around assigning leaders on
each nursing unit to serve as champions. The champions are nominated by their
colleagues on the unit to represent them. Champions are intricately involved in
shaping the recruitment campaign--from how to put together monthly in-house job
fairs to how to reward nurses that recruited a new hire. There are 20
recruitment champions hospital-wide who can easily be spotted in their purple
and green Embrace Nursing scrub jacket.
“We felt that we had our best recruiters within our own
organization,” Possidente said.
“The staff was totally involved with the entire
campaign and they got the opportunity to actively participate in decision
making about the campaign. We welcomed them to participate in career fairs, to
define marketing strategies, ways to recognize current staff and any ideas that
they had related to getting more involved from a staff perspective,”
“The group of champions drive the campaign,” Possidente added.
The effort also involved an in-house branding campaign to
get nurses involved and excited about the hospital’s new recruiting
efforts. Each unit developed a slogan centered around the letter “P”
and the word “embrace.” For example, the oncology unit’s slogan
was “Embrace the Passion,” because of their involvement with their
patients.
Mary Bylen, a registered nurse at the ambulatory surgery
center who has worked at Franklin Square for 24 years, said nurses were excited
about the campaign and were motivated to help recruit additional nurses.
“Everyone who works here is proud of the
organization,” said Bylen, who also serves as co-chairman for the
recruitment and retention committee at the hospital. “Knowing the severity
of the shortage, they wanted to help hire nurses.”
The campaign is now focused on retention and the champions
have transitioned into a permanent committee that works on ways to keep nurses
on staff. According to Possidente, a recent retention survey found that nurses
aren’t necessarily looking for only financial rewards, but more
recognition and more educational opportunities for internal growth.
One of the ways the hospital answered this request was to
hold a catered gala to celebrate the hiring of 72 nurses in five months and to
introduce the Stars Nurse Recognition Program. The program, started in January
2005, recognizes an outstanding nurse, who is nominated by other nurses in the
hospital, for her efforts as a role model to other nurses and their treatment
of patients. Whomever is picked by the hospital’s retention committee gets
a special scrub jacket, a luncheon with their unit and recognition by upper
management at their meetings.
The survey retention also revealed that nurses wanted the
hospital administration to look at staffing ratios. The hospital responded by
adding 36 new nursing positions.
Nurse retention has already improved at Franklin Square. For
the last five months, turnover has averaged at 5.6 percent and is running about
1.4 percent monthly. Prior to the launch of the campaign, the hospital’s
nurse turnover rate hovered between 13-15 percent.
Possidente said the campaign’s branding is still
focused on the word “Embrace” but it’s now being used with words
that begin with the letter “C,” such as caring, competency and
compassion. She expects to hire another 60-70 nurses in the next year. The
number may sound high but is a direct result of changes in nurse to patient
ratios and volumes exceeding budgets this year.
Possidente says the focus over the last year on recruitment
and retention has helped motivate the nursing staff toward pursuing certain
awards such as the Solucient 100 Top Hospitals National Benchmarks for Success,
which included Franklin Square in 2004. Possidente says the nursing staff is
also pursuing “Magnet” status, which recognizes national excellence
in nursing. They hope to earn the designation within the next three years.
Contact:
Ann Possidente
Franklin Square
Hospital
443-777-7119
Ann.possidente@medstar.net (Back to the top)
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