Tuition assistance benefits are helping one hospital recruit and retain nurses

Healthcare institutions across the country have been desperately searching for solutions to the national nursing shortage. Some have turned to enticing benefits, but this hospital is taking a more hands-on approach. 

The University of Michigan Health-West hospital and Grand Rapids Community College recently announced they will pay full tuition for students enrolled in the community college's nursing program, in exchange for the guarantee that they will work two years at the hospital post-grad. 

"We have been 100 nurses short throughout the pandemic and it was chaos," says Peter Hahn, CEO of University of Michigan Health-West. "We really wanted to find this solution that would give us a stable pipeline of nurses coming into the system, [while also] diversifying our nursing staff." 

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Due to the strain of the pandemic, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that 500,000 seasoned nurses were expected to retire throughout 2022, creating a shortage of 1.1 million nurses — a mass exodus accelerated by the pandemic and compounded by the growing popularity of the travel nurse profession, which is leading many nurses away from the bedside in search of more flexibility and more money, according to Hahn.

"We've really tried to do our best to invest in our staff to make sure that pay is very competitive — we've done retention bonuses and made sure they feel heard and that their voice matters," he says. "But it's been a difficult few years and I think this scholarship program is really going to help us bring high quality, well-trained nurses into our system." 

The partnership between the University of Michigan Health-West and Grand Rapids Community College will not only fill the hospital's open positions, but create more opportunities for nursing students as well, especially students coming from underserved communities who otherwise wouldn't have the access to these resources.

"I've been in nursing for 25 years and I've been in leadership for well over 10 and I've never seen such a diverse cohort of students," says Steve Polega, chief nursing officer at UMH-West and a former nursing student at GRCC. "There were second career folks, first generation citizens, single moms and dads and a great representation of LGBTQ students. It was a really good group of people." 

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Students will have to have completed one semester of GRCC's Nursing Program to apply for tuition benefits, and will then have up to three semesters of their GRCC tuition paid by UMH-West. They will then commit to working at UMH-West for two years upon completion of the GRCC program and becoming licensed as registered nurses. The hospital will provide additional incentives for nurses to complete their bachelor's degrees, through existing partnerships and tuition reimbursement. 

"I really want to grow the profession of nursing but we don't want just bodies or numbers," Polega says. "We want people who are passionate about nursing and passionate about caring for people." 

The idea is that the support and investment will encourage graduates to stay at UMH-West beyond the required two years, boosting retention in the process. Should they choose to leave, however, or pursue a different speciality or career, they can do so with the full support of the staff and team.

"This program allows our nurses to teach the students who will eventually become their colleagues, so it builds trust in capabilities and in knowledge and really enables that student to start their career at a faster pace," Hahn says. "There's a lot of folks who want to become nurses, and this will allow them to do that. That was the key decision for us."