As Gritman Medical Center in Moscow emerges from the difficult early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospital is making efforts to increase its number of health care workers, including nurses.
Gritman is ramping up its recruitment for the hospital’s nurse residency program. The program officially launched in 2015, but the hospital has put a new emphasis on expanding it in the past year, said assistant chief nursing officer Candice Allen.
Allen said there are 16 participants in the program and the hospital is hoping to add 10 more in May. Gritman recruits these nurses from local colleges and allows them to train with the nurses in Moscow with the hope they will stay in the region to continue their careers.
“We know that rural communities have a hard time finding nurses and if we can find somebody that has a rural mentality and get them into our rural community, we have a higher chance of having them stay,” she said.
The hospital used to only take in two or three recruits at a time, Allen said, but recently has pushed to grow the program. Nurses were unable to train with patients during the early part of the pandemic, so the program has added value now that they can actually work at a patient’s bedside.
“We’re teaching them how to be with people where they didn’t have that contact for the last three years,” she said.
Allen attended the Moscow Chamber of Commerce Luncheon on Friday where Gritman CEO Kara Besst gave an update on the hospital.
The hospital is not only trying to grow its number of physicians, specialists and nurses, but its facilities as well.
This year it is building out its Gritman Medical Office Building on Main Street to make room for more services. The first floor will be home to Palouse Neurology, thanks to a $750,000 donation from Beatriz and Edmund Schweitzer.
Palouse Oncology will expand on the second floor, and more room is being created on the third floor for Gritman’s interventional pain clinic. There will be a total of 15,000 square feet in clinic space in the building.
Besst said the construction should be finished this summer.
