#243 - Building the Healthcare Workforce Before They Apply

You Can't Hire Your Way Out of This — St. Elizabeth Healthcare Proves It

Featuring Brittany Sorrell, Director of Workforce Development, St. Elizabeth Healthcare

700,000 open healthcare jobs every month. 306,000 unemployed healthcare workers to fill them. The math does not work. Brittany Sorrell has spent three years building the model that actually does — and it starts in high school.

Luke sits down with Brittany, a former bedside nurse and nursing faculty member turned workforce development director, to talk about what it looks like when a health system stops trying to recruit its way to stability and starts building a workforce from the ground up.

🏫 K–12 Is the Real Recruiting Pipeline
St. Elizabeth's workforce development strategy starts well before a candidate ever submits an application. Community partnerships, on-site exploration programs, and simulation center experiences give high school students a chance to discover careers they didn't know existed — radiation therapy being a standout example. Students leave asking to shadow. That's the pipeline. Organizations that wait until job posting miss the moment entirely.

🎓 Funding Faculty to Fill the Classroom
Brittany's most creative move: St. Elizabeth covers the salary gap for nurses who want to teach at partner universities — paying their clinical rate so the university can afford to keep them on faculty. The result: larger graduating cohorts, stronger institutional relationships, and graduates who already know St. Elizabeth before they apply. Two-year programs, funded by the Kentucky Work Ready Scholarship, are producing work-ready graduates at no cost to the student.

🌱 The 30-Month Problem — and What St. Elizabeth Is Doing About It
Gen Z nurses are outperforming every prior generation in retention through the first 24 months — then leaving at a higher rate than anyone else at month 30. Brittany's read: they're not leaving, they're growing. They hit proficiency, get the three-year itch, and start pursuing advanced roles. The organizations winning at this mark are identifying those nurses early, creating internal progression opportunities, and engaging them before the door opens.

🔎 Where to Start If Workforce Development Just Landed on Your Desk
Assess before you diagnose. Talk to your academic partners. Find out what they actually need — it may not be scholarships. Close the gap between what you assume and what you learn.