RN Recruitment Costs: A Comprehensive Cost Analysis for Healthcare Facilities

Recruiting new nurses is a major expense for healthcare facilities. The American Nurses Association states that recruitment can range from $22,000 to $64,000 a nurse, depending on factors like turnover (the percentage of nurses who quit), unit specialty or location (urban versus rural area).

The Need for Nurses

• An institution may need nurses due to high turnover or recent expansion (opening a new wing). It may also need to expand its workforce due to massive layoffs in the recent past due to a soft local economy.

Direct Costs of Recruiting

• Recruiting institutions can advertise in journals, newspapers or at career fairs.

Indirect Costs of Recruiting

• When a position is vacant, overall workload on a unit increases. Staff overtime, agency nurse salaries and training the new nurse are indirect costs of vacancy.

Nonmonetary Costs of Recruiting

• Increasing the workload of staff nurses indicates a decrease in the quality of patient care and an increase in the possibility of medical errors.

Turnover

• When staff nurses experience exhaustion and burnout, they may resign, thus creating more vacancies. Recruitment costs increase when turnover increases. The challenge is to keep current nurses, as well as the new nurse, happy so that recruitment expenses are minimal.