Name: Oklahoma nurses ask Stitt administration for recruiting help amid shortage
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Oklahoma nurses ask Stitt administration for recruiting help amid shortage

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Chris Casteel Facing a nursing shortage even before the pandemic, nurses and educators said Thursday they met with Stitt administration officials this week about recruiting more nurses and imposing a mask mandate.State officials were receptive to the idea of a state-sponsored marketing campaign to recruit former nurses back into the workforce, according to Cathy Pierce, chief nurse executive for OU Medicine.The nurses have also proposed using federal coronavirus relief money to fund refresher courses and educate more nursing students. Pierce said they also proposed the state contract with a staffing agency with experience recruiting healthcare professionals.State Health Commissioner Lance Frye, who was among those in the meeting with members of the Oklahoma Academic Practice Partnership of Nurses, told reporters on Thursday that it was “a very good meeting.”“We are trying to work with them in any way that we can from the state level to help them with their needs,” Frye said. “There are limitations on that. As a state agency, for instance, us trying to control the labor market is not something we can do.”Shelly Wells, a nursing educator at Northwestern Oklahoma State University and president of the Oklahoma Nurses Association, said Oklahoma has had a nursing shortage for 20 years. The national mean of registered nurses per capita is 17.4, while Oklahoma has 13.1, she said.“COVID-19 has severely exacerbated the longstanding nursing shortage,” she said during a call with reporters.Covid-related hospitalizations have soared, taxing many nurses, while the disease itself has made some nurses ill and even killed some. The demand has taken an emotional toll on nurses, many of whom have taken extra shifts and spent more time away from their families, said Karyl James, chief nursing officer at Mercy Hospital Oklahoma City.“Our nurses and clinical staff continue to overcome these challenges every day — they’re extremely resilient people,” James said.“But in many cases, they also become exhausted. They’ve been working around the clock for eight months, with no real end in sight as we enter the winter holidays, which for health care is our busiest season anyway.”Pierce said the nurses also requested the administration impose a mask mandate in each county with a COVID-19 rate of 1.43 or higher per 100,000 population. That would be all 77 counties at present. Gov. Kevin Stitt has declined to impose a mask mandate.“As nurses, we believe it is vital that we continue to ask for a statewide mandate,” Pierce said. “We would not be facing such a significant shortage of nurses if we could mitigate and control the spread of the virus.”

Chris Casteel Facing a nursing shortage even before the pandemic, nurses and educators said Thursday they met with Stitt administration officials this week about recruiting more nurses and imposing a mask mandate.State officials were receptive to the idea of a state-sponsored marketing campaign to recruit former nurses back into the workforce, according to Cathy Pierce, chief nurse executive for OU Medicine.The nurses have also proposed using federal coronavirus relief money to fund refresher courses and educate more nursing students. Pierce said they also proposed the state contract with a...

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Oklahoma nurses ask Stitt administration for recruiting help amid shortage

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