Nurses in Demand in Shreveport Area

              Nurses in demand
in Shreveport area
By JUDY PACE
Times Medical Writer
The person in white is also the
person in demand.
According to local hospitals, nurs-ing
homes and health care personnel
agencies, nurses are annoyingly,
though not critically, in short supply.
"Sooner or later I will fill my
(nursing) positions, but usually it1s
later," said Byron Hines, adminis-trator
of Pilgrim Manor South.
He is just one of many local people
who have difficulty filling the jobs.
He finds both licensed practical
nurses and registered nurses in short
supply and thinks nursing homes
have more trouble filling positions
than hospitals.
However, local hospitals are not
without their problems.
Robert Hall, administrator at LSU
Hospital, finds the problem breaks
down to one of supply and demand —
the demand keeps growing and the
supply has not caught up.
June Owens, assistant director of
nursing at Physicians and Surgeons
Hospital, said it is particularly hard
to find nurses for evening shifts.
Ellen Kyle, director of nursing at
Bossier City General Hospital, said
shortages are also seasonal. The
supply of nurses is smaller in the
summer, when many nurses who are
mothers stay home with their chil-dren.
Acording to a spokeswoman for the
Shreveport District Nurses Associa-tion,
1,927 registered nurses are cur-rently
licensed in a nine-parish area
of North Louisiana. However, she
said, some choose to stay home with
their families.
Although the overall supply of
nurses is not great enough, a particu-lar
problem exists in finding critical-care
nurses, who are highly special-ized
and in small supply.
Local facilities do various things to
combat the shortages. Most run their
own relief pools, use local staffing
services — who are also short on
nurses — or let their personnel work
double shifts.
The latter, however, is frowned
upon because of the fatigue and
strain it puts on a nurse, according to
employers. Relief pools consist ol
nurses hired by the hospital on a
relief basis, but not guaranteed a
certain number of hours each week.
Local staffing services report they
too feel the nursing crunch.
"There is one. You can't deny
that," said Joan Lipovsky, manager
The Times
SHREVEPORT-BOSSIER CITY
Thurs., Sept. 6, 1979
of Quality Care Nursing Service.
She said she gets calls to staff
about 10 shifts each week, more than
she can handle.
"How emphatically can I say
that?" Janet Norman-Gibbons of
Manpower said when asked if she
has trouble finding nurses. "I need
more nurses."
She said she gets quite a few
requests for nurses from hospitals,
nursing homes, doctors' offices and
industries.
Most employers try to offer attrac-tive
deals to their nurses to attract
and keep them, and many report
competition runs high between hospi-tals.
Keeping pay levels competitive
with other facilities in the area is a
must, most said. Pay is higher for
those who work the 3-11 p.m. or 11
p.m. to 7 a.m. shifts, and weekend
bonuses are paid by some.
Others offer various incentives,
including continuing education pro-grams
in the hospital and reimburse-ment
for nurses who go back to
school.
Some hospitals rotate shifts, so
that a nurse does not have to work
each evening and weekend.
Highland Hospital offers a form of
nursing different from the team
nursing approach used by most local
hospitals, and Director of Nursing
Sharon Hudnell feels this is reward-ing
and attracts nurses.
In the method, patient center care
nursing, a nurse is assigned a group
of patients for eight hours and tends
to the patients' complete care.
At_LSJJ Hosgi^al, nurses are shown
they can progress at their jobs. "We
try to let an applicant know we have
specific .career ladders.." Hall said.
" T h e y ""(employers) are doing
things that are attractive to new
g r a d u a t e s , " said Barbara
Dickerson, department head of the
baccalaureate program in North-western
State University's College oi
Nursing in Shreveport.
Most area facilities recruit nurses,
particularly from Northwestern, the
only local school that graduates reg-istered
nurses. The Louisiana
Almanac lists seven baccalaureate
nursing programs and six associate
degree programs statewide, com-pared,
for example, to 52 schools of
nursing listed in Texas.
Employers "are right on them the
minute they graduate," Mrs.
Dickerson said. Northwestern gradu-ates
about 200 registered nurses in
undergraduate programs each year,
she said, and the nurses are re-cruited
from throughout Louisiana
and outside the state.
Local hospitals and staffing agen-cies
recruit the graduates at dinners,
teas and luncheons. They also set up
displays at fairs and student nurses'
meetings.
With its shortages, the local area is
still in better shape than other parts
of the state.
Approximately 700 registered
nurses are needed in the Greater
New Orleans area, according to the
September issue of "New Orleans"
magazine, and the need for the entire
state is about 1,200.
As of yet, no set prescription exists
to cure the problem of too few
nurses.
NURSES
WANTED
R. White