Recruitment and retention remain priorities for health system leaders as finances tighten, technology advances and workforce expectations evolve. But the human resources executives Becker’s spoke with said a number of widely held assumptions about healthcare’s workforce challenges do not reflect what they are seeing in their own organizations.
Becker’s spoke with Alen Brcic, senior vice president and chief human resources officer of Dallas-based Methodist Health System; Rita Essaian, executive vice president and chief people officer of San Diego-based Sharp HealthCare; Shana Scales, chief human resources officer of Lake Charles (La.) Memorial Health System; Amy Beales, chief human resources officer of Parole, Md.-based Luminis Health; and Carol McDaniel, vice president of talent acquisition at Renton, Wash.-based Providence, about the misconceptions they encounter and how their organizations are responding.
Here are eight:
1. The workforce shortage has passed.
Layoffs have dominated much of the workforce news this year, with Becker’s tracking 68 workforce reductions at hospitals and health systems through mid-October. Mr. Brcic said that coverage can at times overshadow the clinical workforce needs that health systems continue to have, particularly as an aging population drives demand for care.
“As life expectancy continues to increase with better healthcare and elevated technology, demand continues to exceed the available pool of workers. That’s especially true for direct patient care roles, from physicians and nursing to ancillary services, specifically imaging, lab, respiratory therapy [and others],” he said.
Of 31 workforce reductions Becker’s tracked from July to mid-October, 12 affected only leadership or nonclinical positions, while eight that named clinical roles also included nonclinical positions.
Meanwhile, the Covista Healthcare Workforce Index, developed by consulting firm Oliver Wyman, estimates a shortage of 2.2 million healthcare workers by 2040 and puts the annual cost of unfilled positions at $46 billion.
Ms. McDaniel said the reduced attention to nursing shortages has similarly led some people to assume the problem has eased.
“Because you don’t see or read as much about nursing shortages as you once did, people think it’s gone, but it’s still there,” she said.
Mr. Brcic said health systems should help build local talent pipelines by encouraging people to pursue healthcare careers in their own communities.
2. The shortage is primarily about nurses.
Although nursing shortages receive significant attention, Ms. Scales said that focus can obscure staffing challenges across the broader healthcare workforce. She pointed to social media posts about nurse burnout and travel nurse compensation, which reflect real experiences but do not capture the range of professionals needed to deliver care.
In Southwest Louisiana, she sees shortages among respiratory therapists, laboratory and radiology professionals and pharmacy technicians.
“A shortage in those other support areas or professions could cause a bottleneck across the healthcare delivery system,” she said. “In my opinion, there may always be a nursing shortage, but I think it’s more about the complete ecosystem of the healthcare workforce, not just one particular staffing position.”
Ms. McDaniel pointed to diagnostic imaging, where the American Society of Radiologic Technologists has reported a radiologic technologist vacancy rate of 18.1%, compared with 6.2% three years earlier. She said a major constraint is the number of schools graduating imaging professionals, prompting Providence to work with universities and technical colleges on curriculum and career pathways.
“It’s not an immediate solution, though. It takes years to cultivate and grow people into those types of opportunities, and then ensure we’re able to move people through quickly,” she said.
3. Retention is the solution in every market.
Staff RN turnover reached 17.6% nationally in 2025, according to NSI Nursing Solutions, and some nursing leaders argue that keeping nurses in their positions is a more pressing challenge than recruiting additional workers. Ms. Scales said that may be true in some markets, but leaders should examine their own data before making retention the centerpiece of their workforce strategy.
“I think we get it wrong chasing the next hottest buzzword, and I have seen retention become the next buzzword,” she said. “But if I look at my turnover here in Southwest Louisiana from an RN perspective, we have less than 10% voluntary turnover. That doesn’t tell me I have a retention problem.”
At Lake Charles Memorial, that means continuing to listen to employees through surveys and other conversations, acting on their feedback and maintaining a visible presence in the community rather than assuming the organization needs the same interventions as health systems with higher turnover.
Dr. Essaian also cautioned against relying on turnover alone to assess workforce health. Sharp has increased retention to about 92%, she said, while internal candidates fill more than 75% of leadership positions in some areas.
“When I look at turnover, turnover is a lagging indicator, and we need to be mindful of that,” she said. “I look at engagement, leadership confidence, internal movement and career growth within the organization. Each tells me something different that I need to understand.”
4. Addressing burnout means giving employees more time off.
Ms. Beales said healthcare organizations often respond to burnout by encouraging employees to take breaks or use their paid time off, when the frustrations contributing to burnout may be rooted in how difficult it is to get work done.
“I don’t know if it’s the biggest misconception, but the one I keep coming back to is that well-being and burnout are related to needing a break,” she said. “I feel like healthcare shifted to creating space and time, looking at PTO, taking a walk, using your time off, lounges. I just think it’s not the answer. The answer is making their work easier.”
Employees have grown accustomed to the convenience of technology in their personal lives, Ms. Beales said, making cumbersome workplace processes particularly frustrating. She believes health systems should examine whether they can simplify existing workflows rather than continue adding steps to them, particularly when the complexity of the work may be contributing more to burnout than the workload itself.
At Luminis, that approach has included simplifying how the organization gathers employee feedback. Through an initiative called Luminis Health Listens, the system combined its well-being, quality and safety, engagement and inclusion surveys into a single, shorter questionnaire. The findings helped shape five workforce priorities, including improvements to how the organization listens to employees and communicates with them.
The health system is also working to simplify administrative tasks for leaders by grouping related requirements so employees can complete them together rather than managing a continual series of requests.
5. Every vacancy needs to be refilled.
Dr. Essaian said healthcare leaders often respond to an open position by immediately beginning recruitment, without first considering whether the organization needs the same role or could approach the work differently.
“Just because I have a vacancy doesn’t mean that vacancy needs to translate into a requisition and a recruitment. That vacancy should be a critical decision point for me to ask, ‘What could I do differently with this role? Do I need this role? Do I need to do something differently with the business?'” she said.
Depending on the circumstances, the answer may involve changing the mix of skills on a team, redesigning a role, improving workflows, introducing technology or reconsidering how care is delivered.
Sharp is in the early stages of strategic workforce planning that aims to help leaders anticipate future staffing needs, identify necessary skills and evaluate job structures before vacancies arise.
“A vacancy should prompt a workforce decision, not a recruiting transaction,” Dr. Essaian said.
She also emphasized that those decisions cannot rest with HR alone, particularly when they affect how an organization delivers care and manages its finances.
“Workforce capability is a business issue, not an HR issue. If done right, it influences patient access, quality, financial sustainability, growth and transformation,” she said.
6. Healthcare offers limited career paths beyond clinical roles.
Ms. McDaniel said people sometimes overlook the range of careers available in healthcare, including IT, strategy, consulting and data analytics, because they associate the industry primarily with patient-facing clinical positions.
“There’s a misconception that healthcare is kind of stagnant, that you just sit in a job and can’t really have a good career path,” she said.
That perception can also affect recruitment for entry-level positions. Providence competes with retailers such as Target, Starbucks and Walmart for workers in food service, security and housekeeping, and Ms. McDaniel said the health system emphasizes the opportunities employees have to advance into other roles.
“I know Greg Till, our chief people officer, has said many times that we can get you to six figures in six years, and we do really stick to that,” she said.
Lake Charles Memorial is taking a longer-term approach to building interest in healthcare careers by reaching students before they enter college. Through outreach to middle and high school students and a summer STEM-H program, the health system introduces participants to clinical and nonclinical professions they may not have considered.
“I have more students coming out of middle school who want to go into the lab because they didn’t realize all the lab does,” Ms. Scales said.
7. Younger workers are eager to embrace AI.
Assumptions about generational preferences can also lead employers to misunderstand how workers view new technology.
Lake Charles Memorial has held two generational diversity panels featuring employees from different age groups. Ms. Scales said leaders were surprised when some of the organization’s youngest employees expressed reservations about AI, particularly because their concerns centered on its potential environmental and health effects rather than job displacement.
“One of the ‘aha’ moments was that the youngest generation at our organization, believe it or not, were not huge proponents of AI,” she said. “Everyone gasped when that generation spoke up, because we would think they were the generation that was really excited about AI.”
For Ms. Scales, the discussion reinforced the importance of asking employees what they think rather than assuming their views based on age.
“If we sit down and have meaningful conversations with staff and employees, we learn there may be some truth to those misconceptions, but people may actually have a valid reason for why they feel a certain way and that is where we learn how to better satisfy our team members,” she said.
8. AI adoption will necessarily eliminate jobs.
Ms. McDaniel said executives have raised questions about patient data, automated hiring decisions and the potential effects of AI on employment, but Providence’s experience with internal transfers illustrates how the technology can also be used to reduce administrative work.
After employees reported that transferring to another position within Providence could be more difficult than leaving and returning as a new hire, the health system worked with IBM to develop RITA, an AI-enabled tool designed to simplify requisitions and internal transfers.
“We got a lot of feedback from our caregivers that said it’s just easier to quit and come back as a new employee than to try to transfer to another position. We took that as being put on notice,” she said.
Ms. McDaniel said RITA has reduced administrative work for hiring leaders by as much as 90% and lowered the cost of an internal transfer by more than 60%, without eliminating any HR positions. The time saved has allowed employees to focus more on supporting patient care, developing leaders and helping entry-level workers advance.
At Sharp, Dr. Essaian said leaders have also emphasized how technology can support employees as they address concerns about AI’s potential effects on their jobs.
“The solution is not technology replacing people. It’s about reducing administrative burden, improving workflows and helping our clinicians bring human judgment,” she said.
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