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The US is suffering from a nursing shortage, with employers and educators resorting to all sorts of tricks to attract and keep nursing staff.
In Spartanbury, South Carolina, nurses are eagerly logging onto computers to bid for extra paid shifts, the way collectors scout for bargains on e-Bay.
South Carolina is just one state that currently is not producing enough nurses to care for its patients. It seems that salary and recruiting are not the answers according to some in the industry.
Peggy Deane, senior vice president for Patient Care Services at Anderson Area Medical Centre, said it is not just one strategy that will take care of everything. It has to be culture and the environment that needs to be addressed.
Employers are trying tactics such as creativity, collaboration and cash to entice nursing staff from schools, and trained nurses.
These packages offer competitive pay, perks, flexible hours, reduced paperwork, enhancing patient safety, and buying special lifting equipment to spare nurses backs.
South Carolina's State Representative Bobby Harrel, said that he is aware there is a nursing shortage. The market will take care of this problem, salaries for nurses and faculty will boost the number of both.
It is important for South Carolina to increase its homegrown nurses through enhancing the nursing school at Midlands Technical College. Last year there was $613,000 approved to hire instructors at the college, so to boost its nursing students, said Harrel.
However there is not enough money to do all the things everyone would like the state to be doing, he said.
The nursing system wants more to be done so as to entice new nurses and to keep nurses in the industry, including attracting more males to the field.
If you take care of nurses, the nurses will take care of patients, said Marie Segars vice president of Patient Services in South Carolina.
