Although the first known cases of COVID-19 hit the United States in January 2019, the height of the pandemic that required a change in America’s way of life occurred in March 2020. That change was the “closing of America.” Businesses shut down, restaurants closed, doctor’s offices and even public transportation were out of commission. It has been said that “every catastrophe breeds new economies.”
The COVID-19 pandemic forced every sector of the American economy to reimagine how to conduct business in this new ecosystem of uncertainty. The core of the way forward must couple new demands for collaboration to ramp up essential services with stronger local relationships, community service and economic development.
One of the industries that experienced significant challenges recruiting and maintaining talent during and post-pandemic was healthcare. The critical linkage between higher education and the healthcare system was fully displayed.
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In comparison, hospital networks and higher education leadership scrambled to meet the needs of this critically depleted and exhausted sector of the economy. However, what was overlooked was the mutually inclusive link between the training of the healthcare workforce via higher education organizations and the reliance on professorial staffing of clinicians from the industry.
In short, addressing the critical shortage of nurses in healthcare requires stakeholders to foster collaborations that allow for creative ways for healthcare veterans to teach nursing cohorts onsite to increase institutional capacity to get more nurses into the industry and close the practitioner-to-patient ratios.
A more robust healthcare workforce
The gap became even more apparent while I was a participant on a higher education panel hosted by a local chamber of commerce, and a hospital CEO asked, “What are you and your colleagues going to do to address the critical nursing shortage in Florida?” After thanking the CEO for his question, I stated that a more relevant discussion is how the industry will partner with higher education to increase the number of skilled nurses in the field.
There was a brief silence in the room. The healthcare leadership was then reminded that most of our faculty came from the healthcare industry and that the resolution is an intentional effort by both healthcare and higher education to build and sustain relationships with local communities, businesses and other stakeholders to foster collaboration and economic development. Within two weeks of the panel discussion, the healthcare network CEO assembled his leadership team, and our teams had our first organizational meeting to formulate community engagement and partnerships across several healthcare disciplines.
The value proposition for community engagement and partnerships to address universal challenges produced several substantive outcomes and strategies to increase capacity in the healthcare space. One of the most critical outcomes of this partnership was the provision of stipends to healthcare network employees serving as nursing adjunct instructors, which expanded the capacity for additional nursing cohorts.
Other benefits of community collaboration include mentoring arrangements, $2,500 per new hire, enhanced simulations and skills labs, and scholarships or tuition reimbursement for nurse externs who commit to the healthcare network. Public and private sector engagement with the community is a reciprocal process that helps organizational leaders better understand public needs, capacity and objectives. This engagement can inspire enthusiasm, improve communities and strengthen capacity across all sectors.
Higher education leaders play a pivotal role in addressing the healthcare workforce crisis by fostering innovation and collaboration within their institutions and with external partners. They must prioritize aligning academic programs with industry needs by creating flexible, accelerated and accessible pathways to careers in healthcare. This includes rethinking traditional curricula to integrate more hands-on clinical experiences, advancing simulation technologies and expanding partnerships with healthcare providers to allow students to engage in real-world environments.
Leaders in higher education should also advocate for public policy changes and funding that support expanding nursing programs and increasing faculty numbers by incentivizing industry professionals to transition into teaching roles. By driving these efforts, higher education institutions can ensure that they are at the forefront of producing a robust and capable healthcare workforce to meet future demands.
