"Grow Our Own"

7/22/2024

This article originally appeared in The Scranton Times

Gathered with future colleagues at Commonwealth Health's Regional Hospital of Scranton, a small cadre of nursing students committed to serving local patients were "drafted" last week into a career in critically high demand statewide.

The future registered nurses, all members of the inaugural class of the Jersey College Hospital-Based Professional Nursing Program at Commonwealth's Moses Taylor Hospital, will graduate in December with jobs waiting for them.

Amid an acute nursing shortage in Pennsylvania, Commonwealth's partnership with Jersey College promises to provide a pipeline of talent for the health system that on Thursday celebrated its "Draft Day" — a high-spirited event where, not unlike a professional sports draft, eight members of the initial 13-student cohort had their names announced and signed offer letters to work for Commonwealth as RNs at Regional or Moses Taylor once they pass their boards.

Most of the draftees, including Pamela Pasko, 47, of Dunmore and Heather Lynott, 41, of West Scranton, are licensed practical nurses who enrolled in the program to advance their careers.

"Really the core of health care is humans taking care of humans, and every organization in the country is struggling with a demographic change that's going to make it that much more critical to have great people who are committed to your organization taking care of your community," Regional and Moses Taylor CEO Michael Curran said. "When we started the initiative with Jersey College a couple of years ago that was the intent, and the way that they approach it is really to work with us to provide a pathway to a new career for people in our community that might not be able to access that career in the more traditional pathway."

It's also a way for Commonwealth to cultivate its future nursing workforce, with officials noting the need for nurses when they announced the partnership with Jersey College in late 2022. That need is not unique to any one health system and extends far beyond the local market.

The state's broader nursing workforce shortage is "among the most severe in the nation," with Pennsylvania projected to face a shortfall of more than 20,000 nurses by 2026, according to the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania.

An aging and retiring health care workforce, a lack of educators and clinical training opportunities and too few graduates of nursing and health care education programs are among factors contributing to the shortage, it said.

A November 2023 survey the association conducted found that nearly all responding hospitals are increasing pay and offering other incentives to attract and retain health care workers. Almost all are also partnering with four-year and community colleges and high schools to develop the next generation of caregivers.

"Of course the whole purpose of Jersey College opening the campus in Scranton and more specifically at Moses Taylor was to help with increasing the supply of nurses in the community," Jersey College Chancellor Greg Karzhevsky said. "This is an opportunity for students to matriculate and live on campus, interact with the nursing staff, interact with the hospital management and executive team ... and establish a bond with them so that by the time they're ready to graduate they will ideally select Commonwealth Health as their employer of choice."

Draft Day was a culmination of that effort.

"The purpose of structuring the program the way we did is to make it very local, hyperlocal, so that these graduates end up staying not just in the community but also in the health system that they trained in," Karzhevsky said.

Those and other efforts to recruit, develop and retain a robust nursing and health care workforce are made more imperative by the prospect of a worsening shortage.

A lack of sufficient nurses locally "could be devastating," said John Wiercinski, a University of Scranton professor of health administration, former Geisinger senior vice president and retired hospital administrator.

"I think if you don't have enough people to care for the local population, what are their options?" he asked. "There is going to be a void of health care services if we do not address this shortage of nurses, not only now but into the future."

A workforce shortage and state-enforced staffing mandates have already had a considerable impact on the long-term care industry locally, with Allied Services and other providers telling the newspaper last month they've had to deny admissions and limit nursing home census counts for lack of staff.

Noting the hiring difficulties many in that industry face, Carbondale Nursing and Rehabilitation Center Administrator Noelle Kovaleski said she had an open RN position advertised for more than a year without a single candidate expressing interest.

At Commonwealth, Richard Rogalewicz, the chief nursing officer for Moses Taylor and Regional hospitals, said the Jersey College RN program and the resulting pipeline of prospective nurses helps the health system build a bench of future caregivers.

"Honestly, it is a relief to know that we'll have this constant flow of new talent coming in," he said.

The Jersey College campus at Moses Taylor complements a number of other local nursing education programs, including those offered by Lackawanna College, Marywood University, Luzerne County Community College, King's College, Misericordia University, Wilkes University, the University of Scranton, Penn State Scranton and other institutions.

"Society's health in general is so dependent on the quality of health care in our region, and I think that society at large needs great health care systems and we can't afford not to have them," Lackawanna College President Jill Murray, Ph.D., said. "For us, we need to kind of grow our own, meaning we need to get students ... interested in health care, and get them to stay here and get them to want to live here and work here and be embedded in our health care system and in our communities."

Other efforts to bolster the region's health care workforce extend beyond nursing.

Lackawanna College and the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, for example, announced last week the Northeast Pennsylvania Clinical Education Consortium, a new model for local osteopathic medical education that officials hope will lead to more doctors practicing in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

The consortium includes Commonwealth and other key health care partners working to provide clinical opportunities for osteopathic medical students, with Commonwealth providing the majority of teaching rotations. The hope is that they'll establish meaningful ties with the community and stay.

"It's about developing doctors at the community level," Murray said.

Commonwealth and Jersey College officials remain committed to doing the same with registered nurses.

In addition to Pasko and Lynott, the other prospective RNs who signed offer letters to join Commonwealth in nursing roles at Regional or Moses Taylor are Dakota Carpenter, Ariana Gabriel, Jennifer Loy, Kathleen Pascual, Colleen Smith and Marissa Smith.

"Getting into this profession as a registered nurse is probably one of the biggest accomplishments of your life," Rogalewicz told the group. "But just remember each and every one of you are going to drive this profession forward."

Pasko is eager to do that close to home.

"It's in my own community," she said, noting the significance of "just knowing that you can be part of your own community and help those people that you live with."

The group's collective commitment to join the team and those of members of future classes of graduates are of "such a huge strategic and operational and cultural importance to us as an organization," Curran said.

"And if we can continue to do it successfully it really will be the foundation of years of success and great patient care for our community."

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