Arizona currently has a total of 722 health professional shortage areas, which spans 395 facilities. A central priority for the Arizona healthcare sector is retaining the healthcare workforce, which was a topic of discussion at the 2023 Arizona State of Reform Health Policy Conference. Workforce leaders discussed retention issues and strategies for recruiting young students.
Sara Salek, MD, deputy director and chief medical officer at the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, emphasized that the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the workforce. While shortages were occurring prior to the public health emergency, the healthcare workforce experienced trauma and a lack of resources and community support starting in 2020.
Salek noted the importance of recruiting high school students, in addition to the importance of retaining existing healthcare workers, which Wendy Armendariz, chief executive officer of Neighborhood Outreach Access to Health, followed up on.
“In terms of high school students, [we need to be] recruiting them into the profession. One of the problems that we’re facing now is, our dialogue is so transparent and honest about how the healthcare system is broken, and how our providers across disciplines are suffering—how there’s depression, there’s suicide, retention issues, people are leaving in droves, they’re choosing different careers in and out of the industry.”
— Armendariz
Armendariz said students typically enter nursing school with a story about why they want to become a nurse, and hearing about all of these negatives associated with the job might deter otherwise-determined individuals from pursuing these careers. She said the healthcare workforce isn’t doing a great job of championing the positives about working in healthcare, which must be a recruitment focus going forward, as less high school students are choosing to enter the healthcare field.
As for the older nursing workforce, Armendariz explained how some are injured or can no longer do the physical labor of the job, yet they still want to remain nurses. She said this talent needs to be retained.
“One great example of that, that Arizona is really on the forefront of is, a lot of our hospital organizations are moving the needle on virtual nursing,” Armendariz said. “For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s taking a nurse and putting them in a box so they can work remotely. They may work in a call center, but they’re on the TV set and they can Zoom into a room, they can look at what the IV pump is running, see the medications.”
Earlier this year, Arizona State University awarded $5.5 million in free tuition for nurses wishing to become nurse faculty members, which requires a graduate degree in nursing, according to Armendariz. This removes a financial barrier to growing faculty, which can in turn help recruit more nursing students.
Heidi Sanborn, DNP, RN, president of the Arizona Nurses Association, said the COVID-19 pandemic brought a silver lining by making healthcare a top priority for many Arizonans—creating one of the highest healthcare demands the state has seen, with too few clinicians available to meet the demand.
“One of the opportunities we took really early was using community health workers,” Sanborn said.
She explained how during the pandemic, the association lost 20 medical assistants, and they came close to closing some sites due to lack of support. Sanborn explained how community health workers assisted with getting more medical assistants trained.
“We have a partner, who provides all of the virtual learning. We then take the clinical training, and from that program, we now have 14 students graduating now at our community health center and continuing on to work.”
— Sanborn