Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire to lead regional nurse recruitment effort

VNH home health nurse Ruth Grover, RN, pictured during a home visit.
Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire will play a key role in the effort to help train, recruit and retain nurses in the region, like VNH home health nurse Ruth Grover, RN, pictured here during a home visit.

This initiative, which will unite up to 10 or more agencies, will create efficiencies and significantly enhance the recruitment and retention of these key positions, ensuring that our rural communities have access to high quality healthcare.

Johanna L. Beliveau, DNP, MBA, RN

Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire (VNH), a Dartmouth Health member, will play a key role in an effort to help train, recruit and retain nurses in the region. In collaboration with the Home Care, Hospice & Palliative Care Alliance of New Hampshire (the Alliance), VNH will be tasked with uniting and growing area agencies and coordinating the expansion of the New England Home Health Nurse Residency Project with the support of a $150,000 federal grant. The funding, which is disbursed by the U.S. Department of Labor, was secured in a recently-signed congressionally directed spending bill by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH).

“Home health agencies face significant challenges recruiting and training new nurses, particularly in rural areas,” said Johanna L. Beliveau, DNP, MBA, RN, CEO and president of VNH. “This initiative, which will unite up to 10 or more agencies, will create efficiencies and significantly enhance the recruitment and retention of these key positions, ensuring that our rural communities have access to high quality healthcare.”

The New England Home Health Nurse Residency Project is a direct workforce training program that aims to recruit and retain newly graduated nurses in home health agencies across New Hampshire and Vermont. Nurses with either an associate degree or bachelor’s degree qualify for the program. A goal of the project is to grow the project’s membership from the four agencies that participated in a previous pilot program to at least 10 over the course of the 24-month expansion effort. VNH will be the lead partner and the program will be overseen by a Nurse Residency Advisory Group consisting of three to five nurse leaders from participating agencies. It will also create a new master’s level nurse educator position, employed by VNH, who will supervise the development and implementation of the residency program curriculum.

The program will create a virtual residency curriculum for recently graduated nurses to complete the program online while serving any of the partnering agencies. A virtual program, alongside the preceptor programs at each agency, will make it easier to recruit residents and help fill staffing needs in rural areas. The goal is to recruit up to two nurse residents per agency for each 12-month academic cycle.

The grant is administered by the Alliance, a nonprofit membership organization whose mission is to educate, connect and advocate for home health care organizations. There are currently 24 Medicare-certified organizations in the Alliance that could potentially participate in the residency program.

About Dartmouth Health

Dartmouth Health, New Hampshire’s only academic health system and the state’s largest private employer, serves patients across northern New England. Dartmouth Health provides access to more than 2,000 providers in almost every area of medicine, delivering care at its flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH, as well as across its wide network of hospitals, clinics and care facilities. DHMC is consistently named the #1 hospital in New Hampshire by U.S. News & World Report, and is recognized for high performance in numerous clinical specialties and procedures. Dartmouth Health includes Dartmouth Cancer Center, one of only 57 National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the nation, and the only such center in northern New England; Dartmouth Health Children’s, which includes the state’s only children’s hospital and multiple locations around the region; member hospitals in Lebanon, Keene, Claremont and New London, NH, and Windsor and Bennington, VT; Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire; and more than 24 clinics that provide ambulatory and specialty services across New Hampshire and Vermont. Through its historical partnership with Dartmouth and the Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth Health trains nearly 400 medical residents and fellows annually, and performs cutting-edge research and clinical trials recognized across the globe with Geisel and the White River Junction VA Medical Center in White River Junction, VT. Dartmouth Health and its more than 13,000 employees are deeply committed to serving the healthcare needs of everyone in our communities, and to providing each of our patients with exceptional, personal care.