Strategic recruitment for registered nurses in large United States municipal governments

The problem this study addressed is the difficulty of recruiting RNs by one large U.S. municipal government's office of human resources stemming primarily from the national nurse shortage, which is in turn caused by a variety of factors. This office, as one of several large U.S. municipal government offices' of human resources, has not been successful in recruiting enough RNs, and municipal recruitment managers have been left with inadequate direction on how to improve recruitment. While previous research studies have identified some solutions to this problem, the findings are limited in that the studies were conducted in hospital settings and not in municipal health facilities. According to Bertalanffy's system theory, this problem should be addressed in large U.S. municipal government offices' of human resources as a whole. The purpose of this study was to identify effective recruitment strategies and explore strategic recruitment for RNs in the offices. The research questions addressed the difficulty of recruiting RNs and strategic recruitment for RNs in the offices. A mixed methods research design, was selected to identify effective recruitment strategies and explore strategic recruitment for RNs in the offices. Quantitative data were collected with a self-administered questionnaire while qualitative data were collected through telephone interviews with municipal recruitment managers. The data were analyzed utilizing NVivo's framework of data analysis. The results indicated that Internet posting and employee referral are strategic in recruiting RNs in the offices. The existing employee referral should be expanded to transition lower level healthcare employees into an RN role. This would help to address the difficulty of recruiting RNs and reduce the national nurse shortage.