CNO Roundtable 2021
Nurse Staffing
Q: Have you made any changes to your hiring, orientation or staff development as a result of the pandemic?
Lori Burnell
Valley Presbyterian Hospital
A crisis brings out people’s true colors, so we will definitely be considering what experienced nurse candidates learned during the pandemic prior to hire. Additionally, we will incorporate COVID-19 lessons into our behavioral interviewing, orientation and staff development courses. For example, scenario-based questions from real-life pandemic situations will be part of our interviews.
Our team will look for responses that demonstrate an interviewee’s compassion, adaptability and resilience. Our orientation training will include a robust review of isolation and infection control practices, as well as a simulation lab experience representing a decompensating COVID-19 patient.
Ruby Gill
Kaiser Permanente Irvine Medical Center
We are fortunate to have a strong labor-management partnership, which we leveraged to implement different nurse staffing strategies based on an analysis of resources on hand and anticipated surge severity.
Collaborating with nursing and other organization leaders kept us agile and enabled us to address the ever-changing needs of the situation. We’ve offered extra-shift incentives; used seasonal and per-diem staff; and deployed onboarding practices we would once have considered unimaginable (including virtual interviews and stratified orientation with both virtual and in-person elements), with exemplary results.
