Jobs!

After teaching the first sessions of my two fall classes, I can share a major concern of entry-level masters of nursing students: jobs.

At least in the San Francisco Bay Area, hospital-based new graduate orientation programs largely ended with the economic downturn beginning the last quarter of 2008. Although the professional nurse population in America is aging, the recession caused many nurses to postpone or come out of retirement, at a time when hospitals may have to cut back related to dwindling profits, or limited public funds.

With Baby Boomers turning 65 beginning in 2011, including a lot of our current nursing workforce, I wonder about ideas for grant proposals or business plans that might help increase employment opportunities for new graduate nurses. Are nurse managers and health care administrators waiting for health reform to kick in?

Disaster Management

The Joint Commission Standard EC.4.11 Element of

Performance 4, implemented in 2008, states:

When developing its emergency operations plan, the

[organization] communicates its needs and vulnerabilities

to community emergency response agencies and identifies the

capabilities of its community in meeting their needs.

Let's say your hospital needs resources to put this communication plan in place. However, your hospital is among the half of U.S. hospitals currently losing money. What about applying for grant funding? You may need to write the grant proposal in collaboration with local response agencies, such as the fire and police departments, but the Joint Commission expects you to collaborate with these agencies, anyway.

We can talk more about writing grant proposals, or business plans. I'm interested in your comments and feedback!

What this Blog is About

I'm working on a co-authored book to help nurses and other health care professionals write business plans and grant proposals. I teach masters of nursing students how to write these documents, and hope to share this information with nurse managers and others who might find it helpful.

Currently, half of the hospitals in the US have zero profit margins, or are losing money. It's a prime time for health care workers, especially managers, to learn how to generate funds for their departments.

I hope to get ideas about what interests and needs nurses and other professionals have in learning to write business plans and grant proposals, and to share the experience and some of the content of our forthcoming book as we work on it over the coming year.