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Demand for Nurses Heats Up Competition Among California Hospitals

Posted on: Thursday, 24 November 2005, 09:00 CST

Demand for nurses heats up competition among California hospitals

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Demands for new nurses in hospitals and medical centers in California have been on the rise as the state is introducing a new healthcare law and facing a continuing population growth.

Competition to hire nurses among local hospitals is so intense these days that some headhunters routinely make cold calls to nursing stations at rival hospitals for luring recruits, a Los Angeles Times report said Wednesday.

Scrambling to comply with California's first-of-its-kind law mandating one nurse for every five patients in most wards starting this year, hospitals are in a hiring frenzy reminiscent of Silicon Valley's lust for engineers in 1999.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger this month dropped his fight to suspend the law, leaving hospitals to cope with a labor shortage that is expected to grow for decades.

Most hospitals are forced to use every recruiting tool they have and invent new ones.

One hospital staffing agency used reality TV show as a tool to lure potential targets by inviting six nurses from around the country to work in local hospitals for 13 weeks.

The result is a show called "13 Weeks,", designed to tantalize nurses around the country with the joys of nursing in Southern California.

Access Nurses, the San Diego-based agency, plans to show the episodes on the Web beginning Wednesday and hopes to get them on television.

The show highlights the lives of "travelers," US-trained nurses who bounce from hospital to hospital on 13-week contracts, following the sun, ski season and shifting staffing needs.

Some 11,000 traveler nurses moved to California from other states last year, along with about 3,700 foreign-trained nurses, according to a study by the University of California, San Francisco.

Such a phenomena is one indication of the degree to which the nursing shortage has put power in the hands of employees, job market observers said.

They said the greater push to bring nurses from other parts of the country could make shortages elsewhere worse.

Nurse wages in California are the highest in the United States, up 23 percent over the last seven years to an average of more than 33 dollars an hour, while travelers can earn as much as 60 dollars an hour, plus housing, meals, benefits and, often, signing or completion bonuses.

High labor costs are adding pressure to already budget-strained hospitals in the state, said Jan Emerson, a spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association.

More than half of California hospitals lost money last year, collectively posting a record net loss of 1.54 billion dollars.

"But because we can't find the nurses to hire, we have no other option," Emerson said.

The shortage is expected to worsen as nurses - whose average age is nearing 50 - retire in waves, and those retirements will be in full swing just as the oldest baby boomers are reaching their 70s.

And with the continuing population growth in California, the number of unfilled nursing jobs in the state could exceed 122,000 by 2030, it is estimated.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS

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