It wasn’t too long ago that health care publications and newspaper stories were all about the shortage of nurses and other health care professionals.

Then came the downturn.

“It’s largely a factor of the economic roller coaster that we have been on since 2008. If you look at the time up until the recession began, there was a tremendous need for nurses and clinical folks,” said Bill Linesch, vice-president of Human Resources and Organizational Effectiveness for Premier Health Partners, which includes Miami Valley and Good Samaritan Hospitals as well as Atrium and Upper Valley Medical Centers.

“Hospitals are very complex staffing organizations,” he said. “When you run an organization seven (days) by 24 (hours) by 365 (days) with censuses that have been historically high, it’s just a tremendous need for human capital.”

In response to the shortages, schools ramped up the number of graduates turned out in various fields.

“Then the recession hit and plants closed throughout Dayton and unemployment rose. Our contingent workforce that we use to fill in came back into the workforce full-time as husbands and spouses lost their jobs so they took a lot of the full-time jobs,” he continued. “So we went from having a lot of open nursing jobs to having practically none in about 90 days.

“The impact on the new grad was pretty strong because openings kind of dried up for a period of time.”

The events chilled the job prospects of many who believed that a health care profession as almost a guarantee of a job.

“As the economy has improved, we are getting a little bit back into a normal employment process where you have people who find other jobs or you have some number of people who are retiring and that creates jobs for those people to come in,” Linesch said.

“Needs are moving up and we have over 500 jobs open right now within our four hospitals,” he said. “But before we create a line out the door, the majority of those jobs are looking for experience. A new nurse with an associate or bachelor’s degree in nursing can’t just walk in the door and go to the bedside. There’s an extensive period of training and orientation that we do, and it goes anywhere from 12 to 26 weeks that we invest in them before they can actually go out on their own at the bedside.

“Even an experienced nurse who comes in still has to learn our protocols and practice and how our system is set up,” he added.

Leslie Kahn, RN, BSN, who is CEO of Cirrus Consulting, a health care staffing company, echoes Linesch’s statements.

“They have to have experience in order to be run through a staffing firm,” Kahn said. “Because, by the time the client calls me for employees, they want experienced because they are not going to train someone when they are already paying my fee on top of it. They want them to hit the ground running.”

Kahn also said that nurses with certification in specialties, such as the operating room, emergency room, critical care, etc., are usually what a client looks for from a staffing firm.

“Health care is changing so rapidly that the people who come to a hospital and stay in the hospital are much sicker than they used to be. We refer to it as having ‘higher acuity,’ and they require a lot more specialized care,” Linesch said. “The people who are kept in a hospital need to be in a hospital for a specific medical reason — nobody’s there now to kind of wait for something.

“So, in the areas of critical care, cardiology, oncology — those kinds of things where there is a lot more training involved to provide the care, basically, there is no substitute for experience,” he added.

“The people who are in the hospital need to be there,” he said. “And they need to be cared for by the people who have the skills and experience.”

Hospitals are moving, or have moved already, toward digital medical records. That is posing another job hurdle for some.

“All my clients are requesting that all of our employees have experience with electronic medical records,” Kahn said.

“That is a requirement hands-down now.”

But the future is again brightening somewhat for health care professionals — even if not in a hospital setting.

“The jobs are going away for nurses in hospitals but those jobs are being populated in different arenas,” said Larry Ratcliff, MD, medical director of the Providence Medical Group, a physician-owned and physician-managed group with about 40 physicians, plus advanced practice nurses and physician assistants.

“Who would have thought 10 years ago that we would have this cadre of home nurse practitioners who would go around and check the patients? They are like my right hand anymore,” Ratcliff said.

“We are continuing to hire and expand,” said Providence COO Becker. “We have orientations here every six weeks.”

“Look at the baby-boomers who are going onto Medicare,” Ratcliff said. “That’s a big area that we are going to have to address.”

Other fields are in demand as well as nursing.

“With the aging population, physical therapy is a huge need,” Linesch said. “Occupational therapy, respiratory therapy — all the different care modalities like that.

“Those are all wonderful career positions. They are well-paid positions and they provide tremendous job security and fulfillment for people.”

Linesch said PHP is using electronic means to search for the right employee.

“Historically HR would run an ad in the paper and we would get resumes,” he said.

“We would sort them, interview them and hire them. Today we are as interested in the people who aren’t looking as the people who are looking. Being able to go out to some of the career sites and data-mine for people that would match the qualifications that we are looking for and, more proactively, contacting them to see if they would have an interest. It’s a different approach and we are doing more and more of that,” he said.