ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) – Hospitals nationwide are dealing with workforce shortages and Carilion Clinic in Roanoke is not different. Carilion said despite its understaffing, it has still been able to provide necessary services.
With the need for nurses and other healthcare workers continuing to grow over the last several years, the hospital has become part of a regional partnership that reports it is doing everything possible bolster the workforce.
“We’ve concentrated on our recruiting, our internal training, working more closely with our school systems, community colleges, and our four-year partners to help really streamline a pathway into the organization,” said Cynthia Lawrence, Carilion Director of Workforce Development and President of the Blue Ridge Partnership for Health Science Careers.
Lawrence said the healthcare industry had known of an impending workforce shortage for years, but the COVID pandemic in 2020 exacerbated the problem.
“Post-pandemic, we’re being faced with more significant shortages than what had been predicted about ten years ago,” she said. “It’s not just nurses; it’s every position along the allied health job clusters. So everything from anesthesia professionals to respiratory therapists.”
According to data from the George Mason Health Workforce Center, our region has a need for over five thousand additional nurses, as well as thousands of other healthcare workers. One way this is being addressed in the short-term is by hiring traveling nurses who fill in openings temporarily at hospitals around the country at a higher pay rate.
“Traveling nurses have been very helpful to us in addressing some of the shortages that we’ve had in the near term. They are experts in their field, and they are adept at coming into a new environment and getting up to speed quickly,” said Lawrence.
Lawrence said the workforce problem is too large for one organization to tackle alone, so five years ago, it partnered with other hospital systems and educational organizations to create the Blue Ridge Partnership for Health Science Careers to address workforce shortages.
“There are partnerships embedded in the larger collaborative, but sometimes we get together and look at the big things like the instructor shortage. We have to decide how we are going to, as a region, put our resources toward tackling those shortages? How can we incentivize more folks to be credentialed to teach in our educational institutions? How can we, as employers, provide educational pathways for our current employees? Those are the things that we’re tackling together,” said Lawrence.
Five years in, the Blue Ridge Partnership is driving more people into healthcare careers.
“We’re seeing an increase in enrollments all across our educational institutions at every level. An increase in enrollments in high school in the health sciences, also at our community colleges, some of our more clinically-based programs are seeing an uptick in enrollments and our four-year institutions. I know locally we have seen an uptick of almost double in our nursing applicants,” said Lawrence.
The Blue Ridge Partnership allows people to enter the healthcare workforce at various stages of their education to help address understaffing and build the workforce for the future.
“That way, we know that we are satisfying the need for our patient care, we’re helping people advance their careers, and they can have meaningful jobs to support themselves and their families all along the way,” said Lawrence.
Lawrence said the infrastructure of the Blue Ridge Partnership will ensure all healthcare stakeholders will work together to continue increasing the pipeline of talent entering the healthcare field.
She added she wants people to know Carilion is doing everything it can to address the workforce shortage and asks for patience. She said meeting the needs of patients remains the hospital’s primary concern.
https://www.wdbj7.com/2025/02/06/carilion-working-address-workforce-shortages