Facing persistent nursing shortages, Temple Health has launched a new approach to building its nursing workforce, the Temple Health Nursing Scholars Program, a loan repayment initiative developed in partnership with Scholars Network. The program represents a shift from reactive recruitment, including signing bonuses, travel nurses, competitive salaries, toward a proactive, pipeline-first strategy that secures committed nurses before they graduate.

The Challenge Temple Health Was Solving

Temple Health's nursing turnover rate for the first three quarters of 2024 was 9.66 percent for registered nurses and 8.98 percent for certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs), numbers that reflect the national challenge even at a well-resourced urban employer. Every time a nurse leaves, Temple Health absorbs significant recruitment, onboarding, and productivity costs while patient care continuity is disrupted.

The deeper issue is structural; there are simply not enough nurses entering the workforce to meet demand. Pennsylvania is projected to face a shortfall of 20,000 registered nurses by 2026. Temple Health recognized that addressing the shortage at its source before graduation required a fundamentally different kind of investment.

How The Scholars Program Works

Through the Nursing Scholars Program, Temple Health offers up to $40,000 in loan repayment to students enrolled in RN or CRNA programs who commit to working at Temple Health upon graduation. The program is structured to get students engaged with the Temple community well before their first shift through onboarding, school partnerships, and direct connection with nursing leaders while students are still in their programs.

Pennsylvania has among the highest per-capita nursing shortage rates in the country, and the Scholars program, supported in part by a Commonwealth grant, was designed explicitly to address that gap. The initiative also partners with the Pennsylvania Association of Nurse Anesthetists to provide additional support for CRNA Nursing Scholars.

Early Results

Within the first several months of launch, Temple Health received interest from nearly 200 aspiring nursing professionals across 18 partner schools in Pennsylvania, filling nearly 50 percent of the program's first-year quota. The results attracted significant attention, including a visit from Governor Josh Shapiro, who cited the Temple model as the basis for a proposed $5 million statewide investment in nursing workforce development.

The approach demonstrates that investing in nursing students early, before they graduate, before they receive competing offers, before they take on the financial and emotional stress of job searching with debt, produces meaningful recruitment and retention advantages for employers willing to act upstream.

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