A nurse residency program at Sutter Health medical centers in the Sacramento area is hiring new nurses and providing them additional training, Capital Public Radio's "KXJZ News" reports.
The program, called RN STRONG, aims to help nurses who might be struggling to find employment after graduating from nursing school.
New Nurses Face Job Shortage
According to "KXJZ News," recent data show that more than one in five nursing school graduates in California is unable to find a job within one year of graduation.
David Auerbach, a health economist with the RAND Corporation, said that nursing schools have nearly doubled their number of graduates across the U.S.
He said, "It's this impressive growth in nursing school output hitting right in the [economic] recession, which is causing people to hang onto jobs and not retire."
Auerbach noted that it might be difficult for new nurses to find jobs over the next few years.
Details of Program
RN STRONG seeks to prepare recent graduates ahead of time to step into the roles of retiring nurses rather than "following the model of waiting until a nurse leaves and then you post the position," Monica Small -- director of clinical workforce development at Sutter Health -- said.
Small said, "It is critical from patient care standpoint, from infrastructure, from everything that the [nursing] graduates that we get, we try to get them in the door as best we can, give them a very, very good program and get them to stay with us" (Bartolone, "KXJZ News," Capital Public Radio, 8/13).