Springfield News-Sun (Ohio) (02/21/12) Ken Mosier

Prior to the economic downturn, there was a shortage of nurses and hospital clinical staff, and the education system responded by increasing the number of graduates in a variety of fields. However, with the recession came plant closings in Dayton, OH, and unemployment there rose. Things are slowly improving in Dayton, but the 500 new job openings at the area’s four hospitals require experience, says Leslie Kahn, RN, BSN, the chief executive officer of health care staffing company Cirrus Consulting. “By the time the client calls me for employees, they want experienced [workers], because they are not going to train someone when they are already paying my fee on top of it. They want them to hit the ground running,” she says. Clients who hire a staffing firm generally are looking for nurses with certification in specialties, such as emergency care or critical care, Kahn says. Her clients also require that all workers have experience with electronic medical records.