"We hope to get them interested in OR early, and find those who just love OR nursing," she said. "Last summer we sponsored an extern program for nurses in their senior year, and then hired one of the externs as an aide. We hope she'll be one of our new hires this year. The externship helps us invest our dollars wisely and ensures the new grad is investing her time wisely as well."

Finding Them Early

Ann Hayes, BSN, RN, CPAN, CPHQ, manager of perioperative services at MCGHealth Children's Medical Center, Augusta, GA, has also invested in programs that bring young people into the OR while they're still in school.

"We're fortunate to be an academic medical center, with a school of nursing affiliated with our health system," she said. "To capitalize on this affiliation, perioperative services in both our adult hospital and pediatric hospital have developed two programs open to our own nursing students, as well as to those from other local schools."

The first option is a senior practicum in which students with an interest in perioperative nursing spend 225 hours during an academic semester working side-by-side with an experienced preceptor. Slots in this program are highly coveted, and students go through a traditional interview process for this program with academic course credit.

"The senior practicum has been a very successful partnership; more than 50 percent of the nurses we've recruited during the past few years have come through the practicum experience," Hayes said. "They know from experience the scope of perioperative nursing practice, they know our perioperative team, and they understand the role of the registered nurse in shaping the perioperative practice environment. Through the practicum experience, they learn perioperative standards and recommended practices and become great recruiters for other students.

"I could have hired more; however, our turnover rate is extremely low."

Hayes also hires a limited number of junior and senior nursing students to work as patient care technicians in the OR and PACU.

"They typically work 1 day a week, are paid for that work and experience first-hand the care of patients in the perioperative setting," she said. "We sponsor both of these programs because we're aware nursing students have limited clinical experiences in the OR.

"Members of the nursing profession continue to age, with the age of OR nurses exceeding the average of nurses in general," Hayes continued. "Embracing the students through these two strategies, positions us to successfully recruit our next generation of perioperative nurses."

Debbie Pilolla, senior human resources consultant at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, offers an opportunity for students from the system's own school of nursing to spend a day in the OR to see whether it might be a good fit.

"We're also a clinical site for some community college surgical tech programs, and have had a few of our own techs go on to become OR nurses," she said.