Nursing and clinical talent shortages aren’t going anywhere if your healthcare organization doesn’t take a new approach.

About 193,100 openings for RNs are projected each year on average over the decade as workers leave for different jobs or retire. Meanwhile, other data shows a shortage of 3.2M healthcare workers  — including allied health and supporting roles such as medical assistants, home health aides, and nursing assistants — by 2026.

The good news is that your existing talent has the potential to fill your most critical roles — but these 6 myths and mindsets prevent nursing and people leaders from accessing the full potential within their workforce.

Many nursing and people leaders still assume that all nurses know they want to be nurses when they’re teenagers. They start their training in college, progress through nursing school, and are ready to become full-time nurses in their 20s.

That’s still a popular path, but it’s far from the only one someone can take to become a nurse.

Guild has seen individuals from all backgrounds, ages, and educational levels upskill and reskill to take on new careers, including careers in nursing. 43% of healthcare employees engaged in Guild’s Learning Marketplace have no prior degree beyond high school1., and yet they’re enrolling and passing their courses at high rates in many clinical career pathways.

Part of the reason many healthcare leaders focus on the traditional nursing pathway is because of the science courses and other challenging prerequisites required in nursing training. Surely working adults — particularly those who never attended or finished college — wouldn’t be prepared to complete those courses?

This mindset prevents many talented individuals from pursuing new careers. Nursing education can become more accessible to working adults while still being rigorous. Support structures such as hybrid learning, flexible scheduling, and dedicated coaching can go a long way toward helping frontline workers start on a new educational and professional path.

Guild learners are primarily frontline workers, and of those healthcare learners slated for course completion in the last 12 months, we see a 95% course passage rate1.

Many healthcare leaders recognize that offering education benefits and training to employees is a valuable and effective way to attract, retain, and mobilize talent.

But they sometimes miss the importance of program structure and follow-through.

Education alone isn’t enough to fuel the kind of internal mobility that would help combat nursing and clinical talent shortages. To maximize impact, education benefits should be accompanied by visible and clear career pathways aligned to priority roles, as well as robust support services to help employees succeed.

There are a few key ways to turn education into real career opportunity.

• Pathway design, or aligning education programs with the roles your organization needs filled

• Career marketing, or intentional campaigns and career pathway pages that highlight opportunities for employees

• Career coaching with career navigation resources to guide people through the process

• Talent pipeline data to help recruiters see who’s building skills so they know when to reach out

Learn more by exploring Guild’s solution for healthcare.

Partnerships with local nursing schools to fill your talent pipelines aren’t going anywhere.

But even if you hired all of your local talent coming out of these nursing programs, would it be enough to fix your talent shortages?

For most healthcare organizations, the answer is no. These partnerships simply aren’t enough to train the volume of new clinical staff needed. Nursing schools are a victim of the talent shortage as well. There aren’t enough qualified instructors to meet demand, and schools are turning away thousands of applicants.

Healthcare organizations will need new approaches and education partnerships to train the next generation of nurses.

While organizations can and should be focused on nurse training to meet talent gaps, there are other ways to improve patient care and alleviate nurse burnout.

Training and upskilling allied health roles to support the care team can better enable nurses to practice at the top of their license. Roles like patient care techs, medical assistants, phlebotomists, and others are critical members of the care team — though these roles are also in short supply.

As you think about implementing new care models or expanding your services, you will need allied health talent to support and scale your nursing talent. That means you’ll need to make room for training these roles as well.

There’s no question as to whether in-person, hands-on training is necessary for healthcare training.

But hybrid learning has great potential to help scale the clinical training necessary to meet the talent shortage. Individuals can leverage online learning in a variety of courses, which is then complemented with applied learning onsite.

Individuals in hybrid programs are already working at health systems today. They get exposure to the medical system while studying online to earn a new certificate or degree, and then completing clinical training in-person for the hands-on learning portion of training.