Sept. 2, 2020 (Courtesy of the Florida Times-Union) As the hard-hit health care industry is slowly starting to rebuild its workforce after being rattled by decreases in revenue in the wake of COVID-19, Memorial Hospital Jacksonville and Orange Park Medical Center have announced plans to hire 200 nurses over the next four months.
“We are looking to fill a variety of positions within nursing, respiratory therapy, social workers and more,” said Brad Coburn, vice president of human resources at Orange Park Medical Center. “Other departments are also looking to restore to pre-pandemic staffing levels.”
The two HCA Healthcare hospitals are looking to recruit candidates through upcoming job fairs, virtual hiring events and in-person interviews.
“Even before the pandemic, hospitals nationwide had been seeing a nursing shortage but now more than ever, we want our employees and our community to know how committed we are to making sure we have the resources needed during this pandemic,” said Mary Reval, chief nursing officer at Memorial Hospital.The hiring initiative arrives as Florida health care officials raised concerns about the state’s hospitals not being adequately helped through the pandemic crisis. Other area hospitals haven’t made similar announcements about hiring surges, and it was unclear if the industry is losing employees due to the high stress of the job or actually catching the virus.
Memorial Hospital and Orange Park Medical Center said they have avoided layoffs and furloughs of full-time staff through HCA Healthcare’s Pandemic Pay Continuation policy, which either redeploys workers or lowers their pay to 70 percent of their base.Jacksonville at large has felt the economic damage from the pandemic as well. In Florida the overall unemployment rate in June was 10.4 percent; in Duval County it reached 8.6 percent and in Clay County 6.8 percent.
“These [hiring] opportunities are going to help protect and preserve the health of our community,” said Stuart Thompson, vice president of human resources for Memorial Hospital. “We are looking forward to welcoming these new colleagues to our team during such an important time.”
Those looking for more information on open positions and hiring events can visit the career sections at Memorialhospitaljax.com and OrangeParkMedical.com.