REGENIA: I'd like to welcome you to The Heart of Health and Science. Today, we're talking to a guest about some of the fastest-growing professions in the healthcare industry. Before we get into our conversation, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Regenia Stull, Chief Nursing Officer at Liberty Hospital.

I've had the honor of being in my position here at Liberty for a little over two years now. It has been fast-moving and fast-growing. We're bringing in new dynamics, careers, and pathways, and it's been an exciting time to be part of healthcare and Liberty. I'd like to introduce my guest today. Jill, can you introduce yourself and share some of the exciting healthcare career trends happening in Missouri?

JILL: Regenia, thanks for having me. My name is Jill Williams, and I'm Vice President of Workforce Development at the Missouri Hospital Association (MHA). My role is all things workforce. I primarily work with human resources professionals on workforce recruitment, retention, engagement, building the talent pipeline, safety, workplace violence, work redesign, etc.

And in addition to our membership, I work with external stakeholders. So, groups like the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and our Missouri Area Health Education Centers (MAHEC) which are local health education centers, our Missouri workforce development boards and local job centers throughout the state.

REGENIA: Well, it sounds like you are quite busy. I'm sure your expertise in the healthcare industry is appreciated in all those different areas. What do you see as the areas with the greatest need for healthcare right now? What areas are you really focusing on for recruitment or for enticing people to come into healthcare, and what areas are growing the fastest?

JILL: When we talk about the most in-demand careers, MHA surveys hospitals annually to gather information about workforce turnover and vacancies. When we look at that data and the top ten most in-demand careers, those careers that are sitting vacant that we really need to fill, some of those careers are things like nursing assistants.

Whether it's a patient care tech or a CNA, those roles are always in demand. Some of our other in-demand positions are phlebotomy, medical lab technician, or medical lab technologist. The surgical technician, who works in the laboratory, is another one that's in high demand.

Also, some of those allied health occupations, especially specifically in the past few years, we've seen a climb in demand for radiology, not just radiology in general, but also those specialties. Whether it's nuclear medicine, CT, MRI, sonography, or ultrasound, those have been popping up as high needs as well.

REGENIA: I can nod and agree with every one of those professions. We see a need as well, just in our hospital and in the local area. Really hard to fill and recruit because there aren't enough people in those roles right now. And so, they're very much in demand. Do you see anything alarming or comforting coming on the horizon?

JILL: Yeah. A few things about that. As we look at the current state of the market, we are experiencing a healthcare labor shortage. We're facing a need for healthcare workers, and we've got an aging workforce and an aging population that requires more care, but is also retiring from our healthcare workforce. We have a declining birth rate. When we look at demographics, we also have individuals who have just entered or are getting ready to enter the workforce, and there are just fewer people in that age demographic.

Looking to the future, we will have to do more with less and figure out ways to do that. When I think about what's on the horizon, I think about AI. How can we augment the workforce shortage with artificial intelligence?

And it's not replacing people with robots. How can we do our work more efficiently? We might think about predictive analytics. When and how can we use predictive analytics to predict high or low patient volume and staffing? Can we staff more efficiently and more according to census patient loads?

It's also things like administrative burden. How can we take what nurses are doing back at the desk or computer, as well as the records that need to be kept, and make that more efficient? So, there's a transition that the nurse can spend more time at the bedside, which is really what they enjoy, why they got into nursing in the first place.

I see that as an opportunity to help augment the staff shortage we're going to have in the future.

REGENIA: I know people I've worked with, one in particular, who went to school to become an engineer. Worked in the field as a chemical engineer, worked in the field for a time, and then just really wanted to get into healthcare.

She went back to nursing school and worked as a nurse for several years. But then she wanted to get back into more of an engineering field. She was able to merge the two together and become a nursing informaticist, and so she does a lot of technical things. She does the computer background, sets up the programming, and determines the needs there. You don't have to have that clinical mind or love for biology to go into healthcare. There are so many things that you can do in healthcare that don't require you to be clinical.

We have, as you said, an aging workforce. Unfortunately, I feel that closely. And we also have a young workforce coming in, but the number coming in does not match the number going out.

What do you see happening across the state or even the nation that negates the burden of disparity between those two groups?

JILL: Sure. First of all, I'd say just to kind of set the stage some, some challenges that we're facing when it comes to healthcare careers is many of our careers require education and training. So, many students also kind of lack the access to the education or training required. Whether it be financial, personal reasons, maybe it's childcare, maybe it's transportation.

Hospitals and schools have to work together to support students along their journey. When we go, and we talk to community colleges throughout the state, and I ask them sometimes, what's the average age of a student in a community college nursing and health sciences program? And it's typically between 28 and 30 years old.

These individuals have families, they have bills to pay. And so, how can we look at better supporting them through their education journey to then get that job within our healthcare system? Another thing that we face is a lack of knowledge about the variety of healthcare occupations that exist. So, just like you mentioned, the informatics position, healthcare informatics. There's a lot of occupations that we just don't know about. And frankly, I didn't know about many of them until I worked in a hospital.

Most are familiar with doctors and nurses, but there's a wide variety of occupations that require education or training, whether it be on the job training or going to community college or to a university, whatever that might be. But I always say there's a career in healthcare for everyone.

Working in a hospital is like working in a little city. So, we have people that not only do the clinical side, like you see. But as you mentioned, we have people that are in for careers and professions, for human resources, for accounting, for HVAC, electricians, plumbing. There's just such a wide variety. I feel like there's a career for everyone in healthcare.

REGENIA: Yeah, I would agree with that. I would absolutely agree with that. There are some organizations that are large. So, so large. Just like a small city. In fact, the University of Kansas Health System, the total number of people that work within the system is larger than the town that I live in.

There are so many things that you can't go into, like I said, without having to have that clinical mindset. I recently had the opportunity to talk with someone who's in education about some of the challenges that people face going into education. Everything that you just said, starting later in life, having a family already, having to do so much balancing.

We also talked about the cost of higher education. Some hospitals are trying to help offset that with tuition forgiveness as a retention initiative for the hospital. You know, you work with the hospital for X amount of time. The hospital will then pay a certain amount towards your student loan. At Liberty Hospital, we do it the opposite way.

Because we're recognizing that people have a lot of issues preventing them from learning a different field or going into a university setting or a community college setting to get that knowledge. They just can't afford the upfront cost. We’re trying to step in and say, hey, if you want to come into healthcare, we want to help you with scholarships.

We want to help you with tuition reimbursement in real time. And we want to help you all along the way. And when you complete your degree, we want to also employ you. We’re trying to start on the opposite end at the beginning to help people get into healthcare in some fashion, whether it is accounting or plumbing or HVAC, or the EVS Department.

There are so many things in a hospital setting.

JILL: Yeah. And to add to that, we see that as kind of a trend that's coming back around. You know, I think hospitals are realizing that we just can't post and pray that we're going to have the applicants that already have the certifications, that already have the training.

They're just not out there like they once were. We are seeing an emergence of more programs that are kind of earn while you learn. So even in the entry level careers where that might require a little bit of training, where we're up front working with the community college or the training provider to hire students and train them and pay them while they are in the seat learning, and also while they're doing their clinicals or whatever that on-the-job training piece is required.

So, hiring them and paying them along the way, and sometimes using that tuition reimbursement, scholarships and sometimes there's a commitment on the back end of that because we paid for that upfront cost of training and education. But definitely an emergence of that is continuing to come.

REGENIA: We just need to approach a very complex problem differently. So, we've talked about different roles throughout. Are you seeing anything across the state, as to whether there is more or less of a demand? Geographically, you know, are the cities requiring more or less than the rural areas require?

JILL: I would say there's definitely challenges in the rural areas. First of all, when it comes to training programs, you know, in rural areas, the training or educational programs are only so far away. And students are having to travel if they want to get that education, to get into some of these higher-level healthcare careers.

So that can be a challenge. When you're looking at nurses and physicians and bringing them in from other parts of the state or other parts of the nation, there are challenges because, you know, within those positions, it's not just a physician decision, it's a family decision. So, is there a place where the spouse could potentially work? What are the schools like?

When it comes to compensation, rural hospitals typically have a more limited budget and so may not be able to offer compensation that a physician or nurse practitioner could find in a metropolitan area. All of those tend to lend into the decisions that professionals make when they are looking to move into a rural area.

REGENIA: Okay, I want to come back to that entry-level question. Have you seen a demographic difference in whether people are from a city or a more rural area, or are they both having trouble coming into the field? Are women having more or less trouble, or men having more or less? Is diversity playing a role anymore, or have we spoken to that, and have we addressed that, a little better than we had in the past at this point?

JILL: I think recruiting diverse individuals is always a challenge and always something, a goal that we strive for. I don't know that any of the groups that you mentioned really have challenges, like one over the other. But I'll say what feeds my soul is that when we have career events and we go to different events in communities, we see diverse populations come to our career expos and events, where especially students can explore careers in healthcare.

We’re definitely seeing a wide variety. Hospitals are always interested in trying to foster diversity because, you know, ultimately it gives us better patient outcomes. The more that our workforce represents the communities we serve, the happier and more engaged and supported that population feels. And the better care that they give and the better quality and the better outcomes as a result of that.

But yes, it does fill my cup when we host events across the state where we invite students or invite adults and see the diverse populations that are showing an interest. And lots of boys, lots of men are getting interested in healthcare as well, where in the past, it was very woman dominated field.

REGENIA: What opportunities do you see out there for the different levels of experience in education? You started to talk about that just a little bit.

JILL: Yeah. So that's one of the topics I love to talk about because, as we said earlier, there's a career for everyone in healthcare. So every type of person, every education level, working in a hospital is one of the best industries for an individual to really get a foot in the door in an entry level position, and they can advance their career throughout the organization and actually going low debt or no debt back and learning and getting more education or on the job training, to advance their career.

We see lots of individuals get their foot in the door. They'll use tuition reimbursement, scholarships, apprenticeships to get their training, and advance their career. There’s a notion of the career ladder where we always want to be climbing up, but there's also a career lattice for those that maybe don't want to climb up, but they want to learn new things and they want to learn different things.

Healthcare is an amazing place to do that because we have such a wide variety of careers in healthcare. You know, there's a lot of typical entry points that an individual can get into a healthcare career, whether it be, environmental services, which is kind of that janitorial housekeeping role. It could be in nutrition and dietetics.

Working with food service, patient care techs, nurse assistants, administrative roles, working, you know, those people at the admissions desk or the front desk, working in those types of roles, too. There's just so many opportunities and so many career paths. It's really open to anyone.

REGENIA: Oh, you're absolutely right. When I first entered leadership, I followed the traditional career ladder. You start with the night shifts and weekends, tackling the most challenging roles. Then you gradually move to weeknights and eventually transition to daytime hours. You were required to begin in a specific area—in my case, nursing.

After gaining experience, you could branch out into more specialized areas. However, during my time in leadership, this traditional path has faded, not because it wasn't effective, but because the need for flexibility has surpassed that model. Nowadays, when new graduates come out of nursing school, they don't have to spend a year gaining experience in one area before moving on. They can go straight into a specialty.

One of my frustrations as a new leader was the desire to implement a program I believed would work well, but ultimately it didn’t. Nurses would enter a role, and, after about six months, I would hear from one nurse who had been working in oncology. She told me, "I've learned everything there is to know about oncology in six months, and now I want to move to the emergency department."

I was taken aback. Six months is not nearly enough time to master the complexities of nursing and the various patients we encounter. That nurse felt she had mastered oncology, but it typically takes longer than six months to truly develop those skills. She was the first person to express this sentiment, but soon after, I heard the same thing from others: "After six or eight months, I want to learn more," or "If I can't move to another area, I might have to leave for a different hospital that will allow me to do so."

This pattern forced us to reconsider how we approach career development. Since the pandemic, I’ve noticed what I refer to as an "itch" among healthcare workers. They enter an area, and, after a while, they feel this urge to move on and explore new opportunities. This desire to shift laterally, rather than just climb the traditional ladder, has become increasingly evident since the pandemic's end.

Can you share your thoughts on the effects of the pandemic on healthcare workers and the industry?

JILL: During the pandemic, our healthcare workers faced long and taxing hours and mental exhaustion as they tried to balance their work and family responsibilities. Since then, we have seen an increase in burnout.

In response, hospitals are actively working to implement more well-being programs to support their employees. They are also striving to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues, encouraging healthcare workers to seek help when needed. It's often the case that healthcare workers are the last to speak up about their mental health struggles, as they are so focused on taking care of others.

Hospitals are prioritizing employee well-being, resilience, and flexibility in the workplace. It reflects a broader trend emerging from the pandemic: the need for a better work-life balance, which is now influencing recruitment and staffing.

Many hospitals, particularly in metropolitan areas that typically adopt new technologies first, are piloting more flexible work shifts. For example, nurses can choose whether to work six, eight, ten, or twelve-hour shifts. Some facilities have introduced apps that allow staff to select their preferred shifts, locations, and work styles. This marks a significant shift towards supporting individual well-being and integrating workplace flexibility into everyday routines.

REGENIA: I've noticed that with the shortage of healthcare workers, competition among organizations has increased because there's a need for people to help provide care. I would love for all of us to move beyond keeping ideas to ourselves and truly collaborate. We could make healthcare more effective, welcoming, and encouraging for individuals who might otherwise hesitate to seek care.

As we come to the end of our time together—wow, that went by quickly—I’d like to end with a question: What is one of your favorite stories from your experience in your role? Could you share something that was particularly impactful for you, perhaps a moment that was a "light bulb" experience or simply one of your favorite stories?

JILL: I guess a favorite story would be, for me, just kind of a personal story. So, my daughter is a nurse. She was a graduate of nursing school during the pandemic. She is now a nurse at a hospital in Missouri. And so just knowing what I know, being in the healthcare industry and kind of what everyone went through, especially those student nurses that were, you know, graduate learning and graduating during the pandemic.

And then some of them were working their first healthcare jobs, during the pandemic as well. But to see her blossom into the career that she has today, and she's one of those individuals, like you mentioned, that we're starting to see a little bit more fluidity in their role and what they're wanting to do.

She started working in a cardiology department in a hospital. Then moved to the emergency department. She had worked in emergency throughout college, during the summer time as a patient care tech. So always felt that she had kind of a draw to that emergency room work. But then, in her local community, which was about 30 to 45 minutes from the hospital, still affiliated with the hospital, a clinic role opened up for a nurse supervisor, so that she was able to move to a clinic in her hometown.

But still, with that same healthcare organization. Just to watch her change and blossom and grow in nursing, being someone who is in healthcare and is looking to recruit the next generation, and retain the current workforce, that's just something that's always made me proud and gives me pride as well.

REGENIA: Yeah, that's a perfect story. Perfect story to close our time together today. Anything else you'd like to share about concerns? Highlights? Loves? Anything that we missed in our conversation today?

JILL: I feel like we've covered a wide range of topics, but I want to highlight our work here in Kansas City, particularly our partnership with the Kauffman Foundation.

We've been collaborating closely with them to host annual events aimed at attracting students. These events have been going on for a couple of years and will continue to support middle and high school students.

In April, we will host our third annual high school hiring event at the Kauffman Foundation Conference Center. We will invite hospitals, schools, nursing programs, and allied health organizations to engage with juniors and seniors in high school. Students will have the chance to interview for jobs and receive job offers on the spot, as well as guidance on the next steps for pursuing a healthcare career.

Also, we recently held an externship event for teachers from the Kansas City area. This program aims to educate teachers about lesser-known careers in healthcare. Following this, teachers will have the opportunity to shadow jobs in local hospitals.

Another event we organize, in collaboration with the Kauffman Foundation, is a career exploration event geared towards middle and high school students. We hosted this event a few weeks ago in September, welcoming over 500 students to the Kauffman Conference Center to explore various healthcare careers. The event featured over 50 interactive booths, allowing students to gain hands-on experience and learn about the diverse career options available in healthcare.

As I worked at the exit table, it was exciting to see the students leave with their badges marked by stickers they received at each booth. I would ask them about their interests, and responses varied widely, ranging from security to biomedical technician, sonography, and pharmacy. Many students were surprised to learn that these careers even existed before attending the event.

These programs are a fantastic opportunity for us to unite hospitals as an industry, raising awareness about careers in healthcare and sparking interest among students at a young age. We aim to provide them with hands-on experiences through job shadows, career exploration events, and other opportunities.

REGENIA: Incredible work. Just incredible. I applaud you for that. Wow, that will change lives. That's what we're here to do, right? So, thank you so much for coming and joining and sharing with us the wealth of knowledge and all of the initiatives that you and MHA have through the state. And thank you for joining us today on our Heart of Health and Sciences podcast.

To discover new episodes or explore career opportunities and more, visit us at The Heart of Health and Science.