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Nationally, earning a nursing degree does not automatically translate into a job. In Louisiana, however, the field is healthy … and growing.
“Not all of our nursing students have jobs lined up when they graduate, but those who do not … usually find one within six months of graduating,” according to Rebecca Lyons, Nicholls State University’s nursing program department head and assistant professor.
Nicholls hosts job fairs in the spring to help students find potential hires. “It’s great for networking,” Lyons sad, noting that work possibilities extend beyond the Tri-parish area. “We encourage our nursing graduates to get out there and network early, before graduation.”
According to a 2013 report from the Louisiana Center for Nursing, a division of the Louisiana State Board of Nursing, 94 percent of the 1,137 newly licensed RNs surveyed for the report were able to find employment in the nursing industry. Like those who graduated from Nicholls, most were also able to find employment within six months of graduation, but others did not find initial employment until nine to 12 months later.
“Although the vast majority of newly-licensed RNs responding to the survey were able to find employment in Louisiana, over a third indicated they were faced with significant challenges when seeking employment, many of which were attributable to employers filling positions with experienced nurses, older nurses that were not retiring, hiring freezes, and in some cases hospitals were closing departments, all resulting in a decreased number of positions available for new graduates,” said LCN director Cynthia Bienemy.
Bienemy pointed out that some employers and health care workforce policy makers around the country feel that there is no longer a nursing shortage, and this has had an effect on the hiring of newly licensed RNs outside of the state. Of those surveyed in the LCN’s New Graduate Survey, nurses who had graduated from four-year programs were more likely to be hired by hospitals than those who had only completed an associate degree. Four-year graduates also found jobs faster than those with associate degrees.
One of the reasons that Nicholls graduates have an easier time finding employment, especially locally, is because many of them were working in the community long before graduation.
“We have nurse externs, and they work with nurses at local businesses,” Lyons said. “It’s like an ongoing job interview. Employers see them before graduation, and it’s a win-win situation for graduates, students and community. We also have our nurse preceptorship, the last class before graduation, and the students work side by side with an RN in a hospital. In the last several semesters, many of our nurses have had two or three job offers instead of having to look for that one job.”
Each semester, the school’s nursing program accepts 60 students, and roughly the same number graduate from the program each semester.
“We constantly have to turn away applicants,” Lyons said. “We have also seen an increase in male students over the last several years. About 15 to 25 percent of our students are male. It’s a good environment for their employment, and we need them in the health-care field.”
The increase of male nursing students is in turn driving up the national increase in the number of males employed in the nursing industry. According to a U.S. Census Bureau study released in February, the number of male nurses has tripled since 1970, from 2.7 percent to 9.6 percent.
“The aging of our population has fueled an increasing demand for long-term care and end-of-life services,” said the report’s author, Liana Christin Landivar, a sociologist in the Census Bureau’s Industry and Occupation Statistics Branch. “A predicted shortage has led to recruiting and retraining efforts to increase the pool of nurses. These efforts have included recruiting men into nursing.”
In addition to a growing number of male students, Nicholls has also seen a significant increase in the applications for the school’s master’s program.
“Many nurses want to go on to be family nurse practitioner, and a lot of the students are employees from the local hospitals,” Lyons said.
The main flow of traffic from Lyons’ classroom is usually heading less than two miles down Audubon Avenue or Bowie Road to the floors of Thibodaux Regional Medical Center.
“We fill vacancies quickly, mainly with Nicholls graduates,” said Eric DeGravelle, director of human resources at TRMC. “We have a great partnership with them, and we get well prepared nurses from the school. Nicholls has a good applicant pool for nurses. We have also hired a few students from Fletcher Technical Community College’s new nursing program.”
Currently, the hospital employs 246 nurses, most of them in the medical surgery department, and that number is expected to increase annually.
“Our army of nurses grows every year as we add more services in operating room, the emergency room and ancillary services,” he said. “We have a total of 1,000 employees, and we get people dropping off or applying online for nursing jobs each day. Employees often refer applicants to us as well. It’s a great place to work, and that’s part of our success.”
Once nurses are hired at the hospital, many of them are there to stay, and those that do leave eventually make their way back to the hospital.
“The national average turnover rate for a nurse is about 14 or 15 percent and ours is about 11 percent, and nursing employment here in the last 10 years had been pretty stable.” said Brenda Arceneaux, vice president of patient care services at TRMC. “This year, we are actually having one of the best years we have had in quite some time, and our turnover should be pretty low.”
Lowest turnover is seen in home health and inpatient rehab. No turnovers in the last two years. Also med surge turnover is also low.
Nurse turnover rates at the hospital are highest in the intensive care unit and the emergency room, and many of those who leave the departments head back to school to pursue advanced practices like certified registered nurse anesthetist, physician’s assistant or nurse practitioner.
“They are well trained here and are accepted into the programs they apply for,” Arceneaux said. “They come right back here when they graduate. Right now, 10 of our 11 CRNAs were nurses here before they left to get their CRNA certification.”
In addition to a low nurse turnover rate, the hospital has a low vacancy rate for nursing positions.
“Our vacancy rate has been below 2 percent the last five or 10 years,” she said. “With the economic uncertainty after the oil spill, we saw a big jump in people, mainly women, returning to nursing full time or part time instead of doing the Pain Resource Nurse program. Many nurses went back to full time when their spouses lost their jobs, but that has settled a bit.”
Not only did more ladies come back to hospital’s army of nurses, but male nurses are also joining the ranks.
“It’s been very gradual,” Arceneaux said. “We are working to attract males to many units of the hospital, and we have a pretty stable number of male nurses right now.”
Overall nursing employment is also up at Terrebonne General Center. “Nursing employment for TGMC has never been an immense issue,” said Teresita McNabb, chief nursing officer at TGMC. “We are comfortably able to fill all our nursing positions within a reasonable time.”
Terrebonne General Medical Center nurses Tiffanie Trahan, left, of Houma and Katie Nunez of Schriever make their rounds at the hospital. Despite a national trend that has nursing graduates in other states struggling to find jobs, the nursing industry is Louisiana is healthy and growing.
