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Danny Li

Watch: How Yale and Stanford hire and retain nurses — without losing them to travel agencies

Healthcare providers struggle to hire and retain permanent nurses, especially when competing with travel agencies. However, health systems and hospitals can effectively compete with travel nurse agencies when they create financial incentives to join float pools, support nurses’ career goals, and leverage data and automation to hire the permanent nurses they need.

During this discussion, David Jones, Chief Human Resources Officer at Stanford Health Care; Dorinda Manner, Executive Director of Talent Acquisition at Yale New Haven Health; and Iman Abuzeid, MD, CEO at Incredible Health, shared strategies to successfully compete for and retain permanent nurse talent, including: 

  • How to increase hiring speed to hire more permanent nurses
  • Leveraging data and automation to hire enough permanent nurses
  • Launching internal ‘travel agency’ and float pools to get flexibility without agency fees
  • Supporting nurses’ career and educational goals to retain more permanent nurses

If you’d like to learn more about hiring permanent, experienced nurses in 20 days or less, let’s talk.

Watch: How Emory CNE Improves Nurse Retention and Resilience

During the pandemic, nurse burnout escalated and turnover increased to a national average of 20%. As the pandemic fades, leaders can address nurse burnout by helping nurses become more resilient, retaining more nurses, and hiring enough permanent nurses.

During this discussion recorded on June 17th, 2021, Sharon Pappas, PhD RN FAAN, Chief Nurse Executive at Emory Healthcare, and Iman Abuzeid, MD, CEO at Incredible Health, shared strategies healthcare executives can implement to:

  • Help nurses build resilience
  • Retain nurses already on staff
  • Hire more permanent nurses

Nurse stress levels are correlated with the number of assigned patients, so hiring enough permanent staff can help reduce burnout in nurse populations.

If you’d like to learn more about hiring permanent, experienced nurses in 20 days or less, let’s talk.

12 leadership habits to improve nurse retention, according to research

Healthy work environments for nurses lead to better patient outcomes. In healthy work environments, nurses feel cared for and valued. Nurse leaders play an outsized role in creating a culture of caring, but may not understand what specific tactics help nurses feel cared for. This post breaks down twelve research-backed behaviors nurse leaders can practice to create a more caring environment. 

Caring environments matter because in hospitals where nurses are more satisfied with their jobs, patients’ risk of death is significantly lower. For example, patients in hospitals with poor work environments had a 16% lower chance of surviving in-hospital cardiac arrests than patients in hospitals with better work environments.

Unsurprisingly, nurses’ job satisfaction is correlated with nurse retention. Nursing turnover costs hospitals $3.6M to $6.5M per year, raising the cost of healthcare overall. 

Nurses’ stress levels are strongly correlated with the number of assigned patients. However, when nurses perceived a more caring environment, even with high patient loads, they reported less stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue. A culture of caring can buffer nurse stress, even when workloads are high.

Leaders have an outsize impact on whether a work environment is healthy. There is a significant correlation between the quality of nurse-manager relationships, nurse job satisfaction, and retention. 

However, there is a disconnect between managers’ perceptions of themselves and how their staff perceives them. Nurse managers may believe they are creating a positive culture when in fact their efforts are ineffective. Luckily, there are specific caring behaviors that nurse managers can do to improve frontline nurses’ perceptions of their leadership and caring.

Caring behaviors include:

  1. Debriefing after a patient death
  2. Making sure staff get meal breaks
  3. Flexible working arrangements
  4. Calling employees by name
  5. Making eye contact 
  6. Telling nurses they are valuable to the organization
  7. Listening
  8. Soliciting feedback
  9. Consistent communication
  10. Advocating for staff
  11. Being visible
  12. Creating inclusive celebrations

Nurse managers can implement some of these tactics immediately (like learning and using nurses’ names), while others require time (like consistent communication). Hospital leaders can incorporate these tactics into nurse manager education, to improve nurse and patient outcomes more broadly.

This post draws heavily from Staff Nurse Perceptions of Manager Caring Behaviors: A Scoping Study by Kelley Kostich, Sue Lasiter, and Renee Gorrell, published in The Journal of Nursing Administration in May 2020, as well as from The State of the Science of Nurse Work Environments in the United States: A Systematic Review by Holly Wei, Kerry Sewell, Gina Woody, and Mary Ann Rose published in The International Journal of Nursing Sciences in April 2018.

Trusted by over 300 top hospitals and health systems like Stanford Health Care, Kaiser Permanente, HCA, and Cedars Sinai, Incredible Health’s award-winning technology lets hospital recruiters hire permanent, experienced nurses in 20 days or less. Schedule time with a nurse hiring expert today.

7 ways to increase permanent nurse hiring speed at your hospital

Nurse and talent acquisition leaders know it’s challenging to hire permanent, experienced nurses. By 2022, the United States will have 1 million fewer nurses than needed, the national average time to hire a nurse 81 days, and the national nurse vacancy rate is at 9%, up one point in the past 12 months.

Given this context, it’s vital for hospitals to close permanent nurse candidates. According to Incredible Health’s proprietary hiring data, speed is critical—68% of nurses accept their first job offer, and 61% of nurses accept their first offer even if subsequent offers have higher pay.

Here are a few strategies successful hospitals use to increase nurse hiring speed and close more candidates: 

1. Make nurse hiring speed an executive priority

Hiring nurses is inherently cross functional and change starts at the top. If CEOs, Chief Nurse Executives, and Chief HR Officers agree to prioritize hiring speed, their departments will follow. Have your teams measure and report on metrics, like recruiter response time, to incentivize speed.

2. Clear expectations for follow-ups, feedback, and offers

Clearly set expectations on how long responses, feedback, and offer decisions should take. This can go as far as setting service level agreements (SLAs) between teams. For example:

  • Recruiters will follow up with every nurse applicant within 24 hours, either to schedule an interview or let them know it’s not a fit
  • Hiring managers will log candidate feedback on the day of the interview
  • If a hiring manager wants to extend an offer, they will let the recruiter know same day
  • Recruiters will process and extend offers same day or next day

3. Automate low-skill recruiting work using tools like Incredible Health

Incredible Health automates low-skill recruiting work and helps hospitals hire permanent, experienced nurses in 20 days or less. 

With Incredible Health’s marketplace technology, your recruiters get a weekly batch of pre-screened and experienced nurse candidates actively looking for new jobs and custom matched to your specific needs. Our algorithm custom matches each candidate across 45 specialties and 250 skills to find you the best fit. Incredible Health’s software auto-schedules interviews, so hiring nurses is even faster.

4. Regular prioritization check-ins between hiring managers and Recruiters

Schedule a weekly check in between Nurse leadership and the Recruiting team to update on shifting priorities. Ensure your teams communicate so Recruiters can focus on the highest impact roles, and have a clear understanding of specific needs. 

Talent Acquisition teams should also educate Nurse hiring managers on the state of the talent market, ideally armed with data. The Incredible Health team provides data analytics reports, including benchmark data with local health system competitors, so teams can make more informed decisions.

5. Proactively block interview time on Recruiters’ and hiring managers’ calendars 

Recruiters and nurse hiring managers are busy. Make sure they have time set aside each week for phone screens and interviews so candidates can move through the pipeline quickly.

6. Moving from one-on-one interviews to panel interviews

Instead of having several individual interviews over a week, your team may be able to do a single panel interview. For example, if you have several managers hiring in the same department, they may be able to interview candidates at the same time.

7. Continuous interviewing, even after a role has been filled

If a nurse accepts an offer, it’s time to celebrate. But it’s not necessarily time to close the job and tell hopeful candidates the position has been filled. For hard to hire nursing roles like ICU, ER, OR and even Med Surg, many hospitals continuously interview candidates, so they’re ready when the next role opens.


If you are interested in hiring nurses in 20 days or less, Incredible Health can help. Set up time with an expert to talk through your needs here.

Permanent Nurse Workforce Planning in COVID-19 and Beyond

Nurse workforce planning is especially difficult during a global pandemic. With COVID-19 exacerbating longstanding challenges, leaders must innovate to support patient demand, new care models, and technology-enabled care delivery.

In this live event recorded on February 10th, 2021, Iman Abuzeid, M.D., Co-Founder & CEO of Incredible Health, David Jones, Chief Human Resources Officer of Stanford Health Care, and Dr. Tammy Daniel, Chief Nursing Officer of Baptist Health, detail how hospitals can use data and automation to enhance their strategic workforce planning, hiring, nurse retention, and patient outcomes.

Key topics covered include:

  • The nursing shortage and staffing challenges
  • Tactics to improve permanent nurse hiring speed
  • Tactics to improve permanent nurse retention

Industry leading panelists

Dr. Tammy Daniel – Under Dr. Tammy Daniel’s leadership as Chief Nursing Officer, Baptist Health has been recognized for the high quality of care provided to patients and their families. With more than three decades of nursing experience and 15 years of Chief Nurse Executive experience, Tammy has a strong record of solving workforce planning issues and driving business outcomes.

David Jones – With over 30 years of experience as a Chief Human Resources Officer, David Jones has led several large-scale organizational changes and HR transformation efforts. He has a strong track record of driving business results, as well as the development and execution of Human Resources strategies in e-commerce, financial services, academic medicine, and healthcare.

Iman Abuzeid M.D. – She founded and serves as CEO of Incredible Health, a career marketplace whose custom matching technology offers hospitals the fastest, most effective way to hire qualified permanent nurses in less than 20 days. It’s used by hundreds of leading hospitals across the country, including Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Stanford Health Care, Baylor Scott & White, Kaiser Permanente, and many more.

Macro Hiring Environment 

Market conditions make it difficult to hire and retain permanent, specialized nurses, including: 

  • The average acute care turnover rate is 17% annually
  • Average time to hire a permanent nurse is 82 days nationally
  • Nurse workforce is nearing retirement, with an average age of 54
  • By 2024, the United States will have 1 million fewer nurses than needed

The conversation then moved into strategies and tactics for hiring and retaining nurses. 

Hiring Permanent Nurses

Leaders may assume that organizations offering the highest salary or best brand would hire the most nurses per month. However, Incredible Health’s data shows 68% of nurses take their first job offer; 61% take their first job offer even if compensation is lower than that of subsequent offers. 

The key to hiring nurses is having a faster hiring process than your competitors. Our panelists discussed tactics to increase hiring speed, including: 

  • Regular check-ins between managers and HR, so the recruiting team can prioritize the highest-need roles
  • Continuous interviewing, even after a role has been filled, to ensure a pipeline of available candidates when a role reopens
  • Moving from one-on-one interviewing to panel interviews
  • Automating low-skill recruiting work using tools like Incredible Health.
  • Incredible Health automates low-skill recruiting work and helps hospitals hire permanent nurses in 20 days or less, with custom-matching technology, proprietary screening, data analytics, and workflow software

Retaining Permanent Nurses

There is a lot of focus on hiring nurses, but retaining the nurses hospitals already have is equally important. Many factors contribute to whether or not a nurse stays with their employer, including career opportunities and mentorship, work/life balance and burnout, and COVID safety measures.

Career advancement and flexibility

Hospitals can work to create career advancement opportunities, including committees, training, leadership positions, and fair compensation structures. 

Career advancement can start before a candidate is even hired. A conversation about professional goals and growth during the interview, for example to understand an applicant’s academic goals, can help managers and candidates decide whether the hospital is a good fit up front.

At Baptist, Dr. Tammy Daniel has ensured nurses have the information and support to move within departments in the Baptist system. Nurses can meet with career counselors at any time to discuss their goals, understand open roles within the Baptist System, create a career plan, schedule meetings with nurses in their target department, and shadow nurses in their target department.

If a nurse at Baptist wants to specialize in ER, she has tools and support to reach her goals without leaving the hospital system. There’s no minimum time period a Baptist nurse needs to spend in her role before she is eligible to switch.

Scheduling flexibility

Traditionally, most hospitals scheduled 12 hour nurse shifts three times per week. Both Stanford and Baptist have introduced more part time shifts to accommodate nurses’ busy lives. Especially during COVID-19 when nurses may be dealing with sick family members, flexible schedules allow nurses to meet their responsibilities at home without looking for a new role.

Dr. Tammy Daniel shared that part-time shifts have improved patient care and eased nurse burnout, because certain shifts are busy at predictable times. Staffing the busiest periods of each shift with additional part time nurses is better for both nurses and patients.

Work-life balance and burnout

For Stanford Health Care, in addition to career opportunities, leadership is focusing on nurse work/life balance. Stanford is especially focused on ensuring they have enough permanent nurses on staff. Appropriate staffing means nurses are not required work excessive overtime shifts, which allows them more flexibility and rest.

Baptist Health is also focused on broader work/life balance issues, but small, tactical changes have had a meaningful impact as well. Dr. Tammy Daniel shared that Baptist Health introduced a mid-shift nurse huddle, in addition to the existing start of shift huddle. This gives nurses the opportunity to ask for help, advice, and coverage if they need to take a lunch break. Structured support at the beginning and middle of nurse shifts has eased burnout and helped her team maintain high quality patient care.

COVID safety

In addition to nurses’ typical concerns about career trajectory and work/life balance, COVID safety is now a key concern as well. Incredible Health data from May 2020 found that only 2% of nurse respondents said their facility was very prepared to deal with COVID, and 59% said they did not feel adequately supported by their facility to deal with the added stress of COVID.

Creating opportunities for nurses to give feedback on their concerns, listening to the practical changes that would make their lives better, and implementing those changes is key for any hospital system looking to improve long-term nurse retention.

Incredible Health can help

If you’re looking to improve nurse hiring and retention, Incredible Health can help you hire faster and staff teams appropriately to reduce burnout. 

Incredible Health supports over 250 hospitals and health systems across the country, and saves each hospital at least $2 million per year per facility in HR costs, overtime, and travel nurse costs.
Get started with a 30 minute introductory call today.