Retired Nurses Help Ease Staffing Crunch

We’ve been blogging for years about the nurse shortage and how medical staffing agencies have various opportunities to capitalize on the staffing crisis. There was an interesting article on Health Leaders Media’s website that profiled MidMichigan Health, a nonprofit system based in Midland, MI, that started bringing back retired nurses to cover gaps in shifts.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

The health system found it had a cadre of retired nurses who didn’t want to entirely stop working, so it utilized the available talent to fill gaps in schedules, work on special projects, and generally improve the staffing situation across the whole system.

“We had a lot of retirees that took a retirement package we offered as a cost saving measure,” says Tonia VanWieren, BSN, RN, director maternity unit/pediatrics, nursing office/shift administrator, MyTimeSelect/system staffing. “Then they wanted to come back to work because of the economy and different things in their lives.”

Click here to read the entire article: Retired Nurses Ease a Staffing Crunch, Bolster Budget