 The Secret to Transforming Nurse
Managers into Chief Retention
Officers? Off-Load Most of Their
Clerical Tasks
Because Elaine Holman, director of the Hospital Learning
Department at North Arundel Hospital, is certified in both staff development
and continuing education, she is well aware that the current literature
describes the ideal role of a nurse manager as “chief retention
officer.”
But because Holman also has 35 years of nursing experience,
19 of them as a hospital department director, she knows that nurse managers are
so burdened with paperwork that their time to counsel nurses who are close to
burn-out—and thus close to resignation—is severely limited.
That’s why Holman included funding for six nursing unit
“administrative coordinator” positions in the hospital’s
proposal for a state Nurse Support Program (NSP) grant, which was awarded in
January 2002. “We recognized that if nurse managers are to serve as chief
retention officers, we needed a support mechanism to help them with clerical
functions,” she says.
Two of the administrative coordinator positions were filled
in July 2002 (in the ICU/CCU and the ED), and results are already evident:
goals to sharply reduce the percentage of the nurse manger’s time spent on
clerical tasks have been met (from 42 percent to 5 percent), as have goals to
increase time devoted to coaching, mentoring, and retaining staff (from 10
percent to 57 percent). Holman attributes much of this success to the excellent
work of the two people filling the administrative coordinator positions.
Just how capable the coordinators have become was
illustrated recently when one of the two nurse managers they support was called
away for several days because of a family emergency. While the manager was
gone, the assistant continued to promptly distribute staff notices and process
mail and phone messages, which meant the nurse manager had a less stressful
re-entry.
More tangible evidence for the benefits of giving nurse
managers time to counsel and coach their nurses is a drop in nursing staff
vacancy rates for both the ICU/CCU and the ED. When the grant was awarded, the
ICU had a 4.2 percent vacancy rate; it is now zero. The ED vacancy rate had
been 12.6 percent; it is now 2 percent.
Holman notes that the hospital already had successful nurse
recruitment initiatives in place before the grant, including an internship
program and scholarships for nursing students. What hadn’t worked as well,
she notes, was retention: “In 2000, we hired 23 new graduates, and lost 10
in the first 12 months. In 2001, we hired 51 and lost 8. But in 2002, we also
hired 51, and we’ve lost just one.” In addition, she notes, North
Arundel has since kept all the remaining nurses from the 2000 and 2001 classes.
Contact:
Elaine Holman
Director, Hospital
Learning
North Arundel Hospital
Phone: 410-787-4576
E-mail:
elahol@NORTHARUNDEL.ORG
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