← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Cheryl Reinking, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, DipACLM, Chief Nursing Officer at El Camino Health
00:11:09
Loading summary
Transcript17 lines
- [00:02]
A
The most important healthcare decisions don't happen in isolation. They happen when leaders come together. Becker's 16th annual meeting brings together more than 3,500 hospital and health system executives this April in Chicago. With 800 speakers from Ascension, Cleveland Clinic, Common Spirit, and more, the conversations get real. Leaders will share how their scenario planning for policy shifts brief breaking through value based care barriers and building clinical teams that translate new ideas into real world care. Join top decision makers in the room April 13th through the 16th. For the agenda and event details, visit BeckersHospitalReview.com and click on the Events tab in the upper right.
- [00:45]
B
This is Laura Deardle with the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Dr. Cheryl Reinking, who is the Chief Nursing Officer at El Camino Health. Cheryl, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [00:56]
C
Thank you for having me.
- [00:58]
B
Now, I'm excited for this conversation because we're going to be talking today about something very special and important within the health care space, and that's nursing development and strengthening the talent pipeline for leadership in the future. El Camino Health recently announced the creation of the Normal Melchor Nursing Excellence Endowment, which is a huge investment that will strengthen the knowledge, skills and professional development for the nursing workforce. So we're going to be talking a bit about that endowment today and how El Camino Health will be using it to build into the future. So Cheryl, first and foremost, can you talk about some of the strategic challenges facing the nursing workforce today?
- [01:35]
C
Yes. As we know across the country, nursing turnover and retention of nurses in our industry in healthcare is a challenge, and especially so since the pandemic. And in order to retain our nurses, we know we need to provide programs for them to advance their knowledge to ensure they have the skills to advance. And that often takes an investment of teaching them new skills and providing that opportunity for them to learn and grow within our organization. And some organizations aren't able to do that financially, but that's essential to retain nurses, and that's certainly a workforce challenge that we have across the country today.
- [02:26]
B
Absolutely. So can you tell us a little bit more about the endowment? How do you see it Advancing nurse education, certification and leadership with measurable results?
- [02:35]
C
This is certainly a transformative moment for us in nursing at El Camino Health, and we really believe this will continue to help us to strengthen the retention of our nurses, develop them, and empower them to become even more highly skilled than they are today, which we all know directly impacts safety of our patients. And we're going to Be able to provide additional kinds of education so that these nurses will have the opportunity at El Camino Health to advance their knowledge, perhaps take on a new specialty. Going from a med surg nurse to a critical care nurse is something that we know and understand that nurses, especially from Gen Zs, appreciate having opportunities to grow and develop in their skills and knowledge. And being able to offer that right here on site for them to advance at El Camino Health is, we know, a true remarkable opportunity for us to retain and develop those nurses.
- [03:45]
B
That's really helpful to understand, I think especially when you talk about having that background and the ability to continue to develop and grow throughout your career. Really makes a big difference for so many folks. Now I know as you mentioned, there's a lot of immediate needs in the healthcare space for nursing talent and making sure that you're filling shortages as well as a need for long term strategies. So how do you balance those two things as you are creating the plan to strengthen nursing pipeline in the near as well as far term?
- [04:18]
C
Yeah, so we, we do a lot of predictive analysis here at El Camino Health and we look at where our turnover is occur and where we may see retirements happening in our organization. And in looking at that, that helps us to predict in the longer term where we might want to focus the education for our nurses and the development of our nurses for our transition in specialty programs. And then of course with short term educational opportunities, we look at where we may need to boost the nurses education, their knowledge deficits that they may have told us through our needs assessments of their education. And so providing those kind of micro learnings in the moment for those items nurses have told us they need to learn more about is something we can do now in the short term then in our analysis, in our planning for the long term, we will be able to create these programs to ensure we have nurses in the pipeline to fill those open positions when we see retirements coming in the future.
- [05:28]
B
Got it. That's helpful to know and understand and I think, you know, really interesting to look at those needs assessments and the micro learnings that come out of them. What have you seen or started to do based on what you're hearing from your nursing staff that they'd like to learn more about or how they upskill? What topics are they most interested and curious about when you are laying out of programs like this?
- [05:50]
C
Yes, it often depends on the specialty that the nurses are in. And there are a few overarching, however, types of education that we've been providing our nurses in the short term, such as learning de escalation. We all know that workplace violence is a concern across our industry. And we've recently put hundreds and hundreds of our nurses through training to learn motivational interviewing, to learn trauma informed care so that they're more equipped to actually be able to perform de escalation in the moment. And that has made a huge difference. And we believe that investing in our nurses to feel equipped to work in those kinds of challenging situations helps them learn. We're invested in ensuring that they remain safe in the workplace.
- [06:44]
B
I love it. That's such a great example. Again, so timely and important to have in your back pocket, no matter what area of nursing you're working in. Now, what should healthcare executives know about the link between nursing and professional growth as well as organizational performance? What are some of the common misconceptions you often see and how do you overcome them?
- [07:04]
C
Yes, it's so clear that well prepared nurses and highly skilled nurses have a direct link to quality outcomes. However, I wouldn't cover this topic fully if I didn't also touch on how important the nurse leaders, the clinical nurse leaders at the unit level are, and also ensuring that the nurses at the bedside are equipped and educated and trained to perform bedside care at the highest level. And those nurse leaders, they are a very hardworking group and they have some of the toughest jobs in the whole health care system. And we want to ensure, with this endowment, we're also helping our nurse leaders to upskill in leadership capabilities so that they can lead the nurses at the bedside who need to deliver at the highest level, compassionate, high quality care.
- [08:05]
B
That makes a lot of sense and it's really helpful to understand. I think some of those groups, you know, like you said, can sometimes not have exactly the attention that they need, but certainly are critical in order to make sure the organization is running smoothly and patients are getting the care development they need, I think. Before we wrap up here, I wanted to ask, how should health systems think about and redesign nursing career pathways to stay resilient and innovative over the next decade?
- [08:34]
C
Yes, I think what we've learned is that we need to listen to our nurses and listen to what they want for the future. Our nurses coming out of nursing school right now have great ideas and they want to grow and develop in their careers. And what we've learned is that nurses who are just graduating want all kinds of flexible career paths. They want an opportunity to grow rapidly in the clinical setting, but they also may want to become educators, they may want to become advanced practice nurses. So we have to be prepared for that and be flexible. And we ourselves have to be resilient in being able to develop these programs that meet their needs so that they'll stay in our organization and provide the highest level of quality care. And we've looked at a few different opportunities for our nurses, of course, in developing unique programs for our transitions, where we've had nurses go into all kinds of different specialties like labor and delivery, cardiac cath lab, emergency department, the operating room. And it's really allowed nurses who are just outside their new grad period to know there's something ahead for them to know that I have opportunities to grow and develop at this organization and that helps them them remain with us. The other thing that's been interesting is that our float pool, which is typically an area that nurses kind of enter an organization in and then decide to specialize and transfer out of the float pool into a single unit, we've learned that if we provide opportunities to grow and develop skill sets within the float pool for the nurses who are in the float pool to learn how to new clinical skills, that they're able to float to different units, a multitude of units, they stay in the float pool and that allows us a lot more flexibility and it meets everyone's need.
- [10:46]
B
Excellent. Cheryl, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been a really great conversation. I've learned a lot about the nursing school right now, the nursing field, and exactly how you're learning and growing and developing the next generation of nursing leaders. So I appreciate your time today and look forward to connecting with you again soon.
- [11:04]
C
Thank you very much for the opportunity.