SSM Health’s nurse recruitment strategy is going viral — literally. Since launching a nurse influencer program, the St. Louis-based system has reimagined hiring through Facebook Reels set to Fergie’s “Clumsy,” glove races between co-workers and a social media strategy to enhance its recruitment.
A team of five nurse influencers has generated “wild success,” according to Seth Lovell, BSN, RN, system vice president of nursing transformation and innovation.
Across five platforms — Instagram, Facebook, YouTube Shorts, TikTok and LinkedIn — SSM Health has 70,000 followers. It also has a 2.1 engagement rate, which is higher than the healthcare industry’s average engagement rate of 1 to 1.5, he said.
This clout on social media has led to tangible recruitment wins. Between 2022 and 2023, the system increased RN hires by 140%. Compared to the 2022 baseline, RN hires increased 109% in 2024 and are up 128% as of June 2025.
In 2022, 63% of SSM Health registered nurses were in full-time or part-time roles. Today, that figure is 78%.
“It’s not unique to have nurses as a part of the recruitment team. Sometimes they make that transition,” Mr. Lovell told Becker’s. “It’s not unique, even at the time, for a health system to have social media. But what really is unique is having nurses create engaging, short-form social media content on popular platforms like TikTok, which a lot of people are still anti today for a myriad of reasons. It’s really unique to have that same nurse [who] can reply to comments and DMs [direct messages], connect with them in real time, text them instead of emailing them back and forth to set up interview logistics.”
How it started
Before implementing the nurse influencer program in summer 2022, several factors created workforce instability at SSM Health. The system’s employee value proposition was outdated and unattractive to prospective nursing hires, according to Mr. Lovell.
The organization operates 23 hospitals across Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin.
To improve its employee value proposition, SSM Health began offering daily pay and changed job profiles to increase flexibility and earning potential. Recruiting nurse influencers, however, “happened unintentionally,” Mr. Lovell said.
The system found elements of its recruitment process were challenging to potential hires, including a cumbersome application, weak search engine optimization for job postings, applicants waiting weeks for interviews and a lengthy preboarding procedure. In addition, nonclinical recruiters could not answer role-specific questions such as queries on nurse-to-patient ratios or career growth.
It would take months to get an offer out and accepted.
“That was truly one of those moments where you pull the thread on the sweater and the whole thing unravels,” Mr. Lovell said.
Another problem involved the lack of SSM Health’s participation in social media, which often promotes negative reviews over positive ones based on engagement.
“Some of these popular social media platforms can be controversial from a professional perspective,” said Amy Wilson, DNP, RN, chief nurse executive of SSM Health. “And our perspective was that if we wanted to engage a modern workforce, then we had to have a modern message.”
TikTok and other social media platforms are increasingly used for networking and career advice — an important trend as the U.S. faces a growing nursing shortage.
An analysis of 749,000 nursing career-released posts on TikTok found 64% of the posts were negative, while only 36% of posts were positive or highlighted benefits of the profession. The study also found that Gen Zers who opted not to go into nursing were “being fed negative social media content at a higher rate than those who did.”
How it works
The nurse influencer role is flexible and has various models. For example, one position is the primary influencer: a former nurse averaging 20 to 25 hours of recruitment work and 15 to 20 hours generating, creating and editing content per week.
SSM Health has had full-time bedside nurses who create content on top of their clinical shifts but do not work in recruitment. The system also had a per-request-needed influencer who worked one to two clinical shifts per week and committed 12 to 16 hours per week as an influencer, with a primary focus on social media content while doing some recruitment work.
Nurse influencers and others in SSM Health’s workforce, which encompasses about 40,000 employees, submit ideas and requests. Those submissions then go through a formal approval process to ensure the content is appropriate for the Catholic health system and that no confidential patient information is accidentally shown in the background.
With the program, Dr. Wilson said the system is looking for authenticity, not clickbait or “painting everything rosy.”
Having nurse influencers dedicated to showcasing a balanced view of nursing, the good and the bad, strengthens the health system’s voice in the “digital town square,” Mr. Lovell added.
How it’s going
The goal of the nurse influencers program is to have instant offers and onboard new nurses within three to four days.
Between summer 2022 and Dec. 31, 2024, the system’s time-to-fill metric decreased by 70%, from 75 days to 22. The time to hire was reduced 62%, from 133 days in 2022 to 50 days by the end of 2024.
SSM Health’s spending on travel and agency nurses has also declined. In 2022, travel and agency nurse spending was $305 million; it dropped to $200 million in 2023 and to $149 million in 2024. This year, the system is projected to spend between $115 million and $120 million on travel and agency staff.
As of July 15, the nurse influencer program also has resulted in:
- 122 million impressions (views)
- 3 million engagements (likes, comments, shares and saves)
- 3,800 short-form videos
- 75 viral posts
- 32 super-viral posts
- 1 mega-viral post
The mega-viral post is a 26-second TikTok about the differences between day shift and night shift nurses.
“I’m day shift. I get all of the DAISY Awards,” one nurse says in the video. “We’re night shift. We get leftover pizza,” her colleague quips.
Mr. Lovell defined a mega-viral post as having more than 5 million impressions. The day shift versus night shift TikTok, which was part of a larger social media trend and played part of Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer,” has amassed more than 7.7 million impressions.
Tips for replication
Health systems and hospitals interested in subscribing to this model should align their respective organization’s mission and values with the project, as well as talk to nursing leaders to gauge their comfort levels, Dr. Wilson said.
Mr. Lovell said initial pushback came from leaders who were worried they would lose control in the recruitment and hiring process. Three of the five nurse influencers at SSM Health were most recently nurse managers, and those influencers have given hours back to leaders by offloading responsibilities, Dr. Wilson said.
“That was definitely an unexpected benefit that is really being magnified within the organization: The trust that’s been able to be developed amongst nurse leaders [and] the time given back to them,” she said.
