Hospital’s nurse vacancies decreasing over the months

The Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. has been seeing a decrease in its vacancies for nurses, hospital administrator Jesse M. Tudela told Saipan Tribune on Friday.

Tudela said the hospital as of now only has 33 vacant positions for registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and nurse assistants, down from the 42 vacancies in March.

The hospital has been finding it difficult in recent months to fill hard-to-fill positions, most especially seasoned nurses.

According to Tudela the hospital needs seasoned nurses in specific units such as the neo-natal intensive care unit or NICU, labor and delivery, and emergency rooms.

“The process of hiring seasoned nurses is still ongoing and also the hiring of other nurses. Many positions used to be so vacant, but [filling them] is a slow process,” he said.

Tudela said they have been trying to hire recent graduates from the Northern Marianas College but had little success, with most of them wanting to further their education.

Northern Marianas College had 23 associate degree graduates in nursing this year and more than three have already passed the National Council Licensure Examination.

Tudela said they hired six NMC nursing graduates last year and two in August this year.

He said that three registered nurses would be coming in from the U.S. mainland this September, together with six registered nurses who are contract workers.

“This really helps the hospital a lot, but the nursing vacancies sometimes go up or down because some resign and leave,” he said.

Hospital beds
According to Tudela, the hospital as of Friday was at 62 percent capacity, of which 40 percent were in medical/surgical.

This is down a bit from the past three months, when the hospital was at 90 to 100 percent capacity, Tudela said. When the hospital is at full capacity, the lack of enough number of hospital beds hamper operations.

“When the hospital is at full capacity, most especially the medical/surgical unit, and our census is high, there are those days when it overflow to other units due to the lack of beds,” he said.

Tudela said he appreciates the funding the hospital gets from the Legislature, but it is still not enough.

“I just hope that our government looks at healthcare like they look at education, because the hospital helps prevent all these diseases, and also promotes a healthier lifestyle not only for students but everybody in the community,” he said.

Notable achievements
The hospital’s roster for physicians is becoming better, Tudela said, with physicians being hired every month.

According to the latest information from the hospital, there are 33 physicians now serving under CHCC and chief executive officer Esther Muña said that more are coming in the following months as part of their recruitment and retention plan.

As of last month, Muña said that seven physicians are Internal Medicine doctors, six are pediatricians, four are in emergency medicine, three are general surgeons, three are anesthesiologists, one is a nephrologist, three are for OB/GYN, one is a psychiatrist, four are family practitioners for each facility on Tinian, Rota, the Kagman Community Health Center, and CHC, and one is a gastroenterologist.

CHCC also recently opened its dental clinic with one dentist, Dr. Adam J. Gentry, and three dental assistants.

CHCC also secured a $50,000 grant for hospital beds from the U.S Department of Agriculture last week and was recently awarded $68,918 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The $68,918 will be use for providing expanded prevention and public health programs that help improve health and help restrain the rate of growth in private and public sector health care costs and increase capacity to reduce emerging infectious deceases.

CHCC also still has bigger grants under USDA’s Rural Development in Guam, according to area manager Joseph Diego, in which they are trying to secure for CHCC and help out with the hospital’s critical condition.