The head of Windsor Regional Hospital says they have had some great success in recent years when it comes to nurse recruitment and retention.
President and Chief Executive Officer David Musyj says on any given day, they are now down to 60 or 70 external vacancies, many of those involving speciality positions.
"Over my lifetime at Windsor Regional Hospital, we would have times where we would have hundreds of nurse vacancies there," he says. "So to be down to 60, would it be great to be at zero? Of course. But to be at 60, we're doing a lot of positive things and a lot of things coming together to make it work."
He highlighted the situation during a speech Monday during a Rotary Club of Windsor (1918) event at the Caboto Club in Windsor.
Musyj credits a few factors for the increased recruitment and retention, including financial incentives and sign-on bonuses offered by the province to aid certain hospitals, a program he calls important given the aggressive recruitment efforts by hospitals over in Detroit.
In 2021, Windsor Regional Hospital was selected as one of several Ontario hospitals eligible to offer government-supported financial incentives through the Ministry of Health to address staffing issues.
The incentives have included signing bonuses ranging between $10,000 and $75,000, depending on qualifications, for nurses from out of province or out of country, including Canadians currently working in the U.S.
Musyj says at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, they also started hiring third and fourth year University of Windsor nursing students to help support frontline staff.
"What that does, again, is help support existing nurses, but also, in the third and fourth years, when it comes time to graduate, they've developed relationships, made friends, and become comfortable," he says, "We like them, they like us, and as a result, when jobs become available, they're filling them up."
Windsor Regional Hospital currently employs 1,940 Registered Nurses and Registered Practical Nurses, up from 1,828 in March 2023.
Musyj hopes provincial funding to hire third and fourth year students, along with funding to support financial incentives and sign-on bonuses, will be included when the Ontario budget is released Tuesday.