Of all the places Oralia Aragon could have started her nursing career, she said she chose USC University Hospital for one very important reason - an established orientation program for recent graduates.

Now, five years later, Aragon has a whole host of reasons for sticking around: career development, educational incentives, the backing of one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the country and support from her colleagues.

"There is a tremendous sense of teamwork here and lots of encouragement," said Aragon, a clinical educator on the cardiothoracic telemetry unit at USC University Hospital. "This is a place where people see strengths in you, and then help you develop those strengths."

Administrators say Aragon's sentiments are indicative of the nursing staff at the USC hospitals, and help explain an annual turnover rate of about 4 percent among nurses here. That figure is far better than the national average of more than 14 percent for bedside nurses.

"Our retention rates are so high, I believe, because of all the wonderful incentives we offer our nurses here," said Chief Nursing Officer Ellen Whalen. "We are giving our nurses more resources than they ever had before and we are also providing them with the on unit support they need to better care for their patients."

Since the beginning of the fiscal year, administrators have spent about $800,000 in new equipment for the nurses, such as vital sign monitors at each bedside and hemodynamic modules for the ICU monitors. They've decreased the number of patients per nurse on medical/surgical and telemetry units, added a resource nurse on each floor to assist the nursing staff, and have added more nurse managers so that each manager can spend more time with their his/her staff on the units.

In addition, charge nurses at the hospitals have received combined annual market salary adjustments of more than half a million dollars in additional pay.

Both Whalen and Aragon agreed all of these perks are just some of the incentives that not only help attract nurses, but help to retain them as well.

For Aragon, the USC hospitals have been a place to nourish and grow her nursing career. She received her bachelor's in nursing in 2006, through a program offered on-site at University Hospital, joined the Nursing Quality Committee shortly after and is now getting ready to begin a master's program in nursing.

"The USC hospitals really allow you to expand your career," Aragon said. "Plus, just the mere fact that you are working for USC is really exciting. I really love that."

And she's not the only one.

Since USC's acquisition of USC University Hospital and USC Norris Cancer Hospital in April 2009, 60 experienced nurses and 75 recently graduated nurses have been hired. That has helped to dramatically decrease the number of registry nurses in the hospitals.
And with more than 180 nursing positions still vacant, Whalen hopes to quickly fill the nursing staff with permanent part-time and full-time employees.

"We are aggressively recruiting because we want to expand our services and accommodate our increase in patient census," she said, adding that the average daily census is about 210.

Ryan Matthews is one of those recent hires. He was brought on board last year after completing the 18-week Versant RN Residency and now works on 7-West. He said the support he receives from his colleagues has been helpful in his transition as a recent graduate.

"This a good place to work, and I really like my unit" he said. "Everybody really works together to help new employees."