A nurse tiptoeing through a darkened unit on night rounds. A knowing groan about someone daring to say “the Q word” on shift. A bit about being humbled by hospital furniture. Three years after SSM Health wove its nurse recruitment strategy into a stream of clips like these, standout videos are pulling in millions of views apiece — and, the system says, so is the payoff.
The St. Louis-based system launched its five-person nurse influencer program in summer 2022 to strengthen nurse recruitment. Three years in, it has reached a milestone its leaders once considered improbable: For the first time in its recorded history, SSM Health is spending more on contract labor for non-nursing clinical roles than for nursing, according to Seth Lovell, RN, system vice president of nursing transformation and innovation at the 23-hospital system.
“Massive, massive, massive success for us,” Mr. Lovell told Becker’s. “Obviously heavily influenced by the work that [our team has] done. Our brand has never been received better … To be honest, I don’t know if I would have told you it would have been possible three years ago.”
In 2022, SSM Health spent $305 million on clinical contract labor. That figure fell below $100 million in 2025. Nursing-specific agency work is now “basically nonexistent” across the system besides St. Louis University Hospital, which accounts for roughly 80% of SSM Health’s nurse contract labor, Mr. Lovell said. The organization’s largest staffing gap has migrated to technician roles, particularly surgical techs and imaging techs.
The recruitment side tells a similar story. SSM Health has logged its three strongest RN hiring years on record under the nurse influencer program, clearing 2,000 hires each year for the first time: 2,763 registered nurses in 2023, 2,073 in 2024 and 2,145 in 2025. The share of full- and part-time hours worked by employed RNs climbed from roughly 70% in 2023 to about 85% by July 2026 — a swing the system attributes in part to converting travel nurses into core staff.
“A lot of nurses that were traveling, they stopped. They want to make a home,” said Melissa Farmer, RN, regional director of talent acquisition, who now oversees the influencer team. “We partnered with our ministries to find out who had the travelers and where they were … and we did our best to essentially convert them to core staff. They decided to make St. Louis their home, Wisconsin their home, Oklahoma their home.”
Share of hours worked by employed nurses: ~70% → 85% (2023 to July 2026)
First time on record that non-nursing clinical roles outspend nursing on contract labor
Below the 17.6% national benchmark (2026 NSI report) every year
From experiment to operating model
The team of five nurse influencers has not grown in headcount, but its shape has changed. The influencers now function as full-cycle recruiters as much as content creators — a hybrid Ms. Farmer describes as “part content creation, part organic connection with our candidates.”
“Just being a nurse influencer, it is, in my humble opinion, one of the best places to bring in candidates organically and give them the ability to talk to a nurse, nurse to nurse, in order to find a job,” she said.
Ms. Farmer joined SSM Health as a new-grad labor and delivery nurse in January 2010, spent about 13 years at the bedside, and was among the original nurse influencers when the team formed in 2023 before rising to lead it.
“As a labor and delivery nurse, I’ve always kind of been — it’s weird to call yourself a recruiter — but I’ve been a hype girl,” she said. “Taking the knowledge that I learned as a bedside nurse and applying it to recruitment was natural.”
Ms. Farmer refers to the group as “the SWAT team.”
“We go where the need is, so we will adjust and pivot where we’re needed,” she said. “If we have a hiring need, we’re going to put the expedited team [on it] … we can talk to nurses, relate to them quickly, and get them started as soon as possible.”
That speed reshaped operations downstream. Once recruiters began extending offers within 10 minutes of first contact, SSM Health found its onboarding could not keep pace and rebuilt it. Candidates who clear their drug screen and background check quickly can now start the following week.
A model other systems are trying to copy
SSM Health’s leaders said the program’s edge is not that it puts nurses in recruitment, which plenty of systems do, but that it fuses influencer content creation and talent acquisition into a single function. A candidate who engages with a video may end up speaking to and recruited by the same nurse who made it.
The system has layered other pipeline efforts on top, including a partnership with the nation’s largest nursing school, Chamberlain University, and a new nurse extern program, with social content built around each.
That combination has drawn a steady stream of inbound interest. Over the past six to nine months, Mr. Lovell said, a growing number of health systems have reached out to ask how the program works. The questions have shifted from the early days.
“Now it’s a lot [of questions about] the logistics,” he said. “‘What job profiles do you have on the social media side? What review process do you have to ensure content moderation is in place? What happens when someone escalates a social media video because they feel like it’s misaligned?'”
For Mr. Lovell, the inquiries are affirming. “It’s validating, first and foremost,” he said, adding that the system has taken to heart CEO Laura Kaiser’s charge to “tell a remarkable story far and wide.”
The internal engine has broadened, too. SSM Health added content creation as a way for nurses to earn points in its clinical ladder program in 2025 — an option Mr. Lovell said drew a slow start but a “nice uptick” in submissions for 2026. Marketing program manager Andrea Zimmerman has helped pull a wider range of practicing clinicians into the system’s social content, some of whom now pitch video ideas unprompted.
Retention and what comes next
The hires appear to be staying. SSM Health’s turnover among full- and part-time registered nurses has run below the national rate every year since the program began, according to figures the system provided. A 2026 NSI report puts national RN turnover at 17.6%; SSM Health reported 15.8% in 2024, 13.5% in 2025 and 15.1% year to date through July 2026.
Ms. Farmer credits more than recruiting. The turnover figures are “a testament not only to our recruitment and onboarding experience,” she said, “but reinforce how important our mission is, our total compensation package, including career advancement opportunities, and the culture our caregivers work in every single day.”
Where the model goes next depends largely on where the need lands. Leaders said they are open to pointing the expedited team at technician roles and even non-clinical positions where the system leans on high-cost contract labor. They are also watching the social media landscape, which Mr. Lovell said has shifted sharply since 2022 — toward short-form video, “micro-influencing” and grassroots creators, and community groups such as the 15,000-member STL Nurses page.
“If you were to take recruitment and social media and start [from] a blank slate … it would look radically different than what most organizations have as their current process,” Mr. Lovell said. “If there’s ever a time to try something very different, I think the time is now.”
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