ST. LOUIS — There's a growing shortage in St. Louis area hospitals as the pandemic is taking its toll on health care workers, especially nurses.
Over the course of the last 18 months Denise Murphy, chief nurse executive at BJC, said the health care industry has been turned on its head.
“The pandemic has put our frontline nurses under a microscope,” said Murphy. “We’ve seen them as courageous warriors fighting this horrible virus that just seems to keep taking and taking from us.”
Murphy said the constant mental and emotional grind of the COVID-19 pandemic has nurses leaving the industry in record numbers.
“We’re all exhausted,” said Murphy.
Systemwide, BJC has roughly 11,000 nurses. But with a 15% turnover rate, they’re forced to replace more than 100 nurses every month.
“That’s way higher than we’ve ever seen,” said Murphy.
In an effort to fill the gaps, hospitals were given federal CARES Act funding to try and hire travel nurses, but even that has proven to be a challenge.
“It’s actually harder to get traveling nurses,” said Murphy. “We get a fraction of the ones we request on a monthly basis, and it’s because they, too, are burning out.”
That’s left BJC with roughly 900 openings.
“We are not in trouble,” said Murphy. “We’re staffing the beds.”
By offering tuition assistance and partnering with schools like UMSL and SIU-Edwardsville, they’re working to develop a pipeline for the next wave of nurses, and Murphy said she tells them all the same thing.
“You can make more money doing an easier job, but to be a nurse is to be someone so special in this world,” said Murphy. “It’s got to be something that you’re called to do.”
If you’re interested in applying for a job at BJC click here.