Latest / Becker’s Healthcare - Clinical Leadership Podcast / Amber Rollins, Chief Nursing Officer at South Arkansas Regional Hospital

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Amber Rollins, Chief Nursing Officer at South Arkansas Regional Hospital · Becker’s Healthcare - Clinical Leadership Podcast

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  Thanks for listening. Now here's the episode.
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  Welcome everyone, to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. I'm Maria Mohammed,
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  writer in moderator with Becker's Healthcare.
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  I'm absolutely thrilled to have with me today. Amber Rolands,
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  chief Nursing Officer at South Arkansas Regional Hospital. Amber Burns,
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  very nice to have you on the podcast today. How are you?
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  I'm doing great, thank you. I'm, I'm really excited to discuss, um,
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  healthcare with everyone and share a little bit about what we are experiencing
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  in, um, rural Arkansas.
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  Yeah, of course. To get us started,
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  would you mind please introducing yourself and telling us a bit about your
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  background and organization?
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  Um, absolutely.
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  So I am the Chief Nursing Officer at South Arkansas Regional Hospital.
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  It is a 166 bed regional facility. Um,
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  something really interesting about our hospital is just recently in July,
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  we divested from a large corporation,
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  a for-profit corporation and we are now owned by a local governing
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  board. And, um, so we are non-profit now as of July.
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  So going through these changes and tons of new experiences,
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  learning lots of good resources, some good, some bad, um, but not,
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  not very common for us. Um, a little bit about myself. Uh, I,
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  most of my background is emergency room and most of it at large academic
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  facilities. And now I'm at a, a rural hospital, so it's quite a bit of a change.
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  Um,
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  I started out wanting to just be an ER nurse for the rest of my life and then
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  working, you know, bedside in a big trauma center.
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  I kind of had an epiphany watching all of the amazing nurses around me.
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  I just thought, um, I want to lead them differently. I want to, you know,
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  have a little more interaction, a little more engagement,
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  and really take care of the nurses. So I decided to go back to school,
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  complete my bachelor's. I got a supervisor role, um,
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  continued with school, finished my master's and then, um,
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  got a director role as an emergency room director.
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  Learned very quickly that whenever you're the director of a nursing department,
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  you now own a small business.
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  So I went back to school for an MBA so I could kind of learn the finance side
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  that they don't teach you or show you at all whenever you're doing bedside
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  nursing, um, and kind of advance from there.
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  Executive director took on several more departments, went back to school.
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  I'm just about done with my DNP. Um,
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  and this is my first CNO role and I've been in this hospital for about
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  16 months now.
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  Got it, got it.
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  Thank you so much for giving us that background on yourself and organization.
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  Um, so Amber, the first question I really wanted to ask you is,
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  can you tell me about your most successful project or initiative from the last
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  year? What issues were you trying to solve and also what drove the success?
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  Um, absolutely. So I guess the,
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  the most successful project that I've undergone in the last year would be that
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  in June of 2022, I started at the hospital.
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  I'm currently at South Arkansas Regional Hospital and we had about 50 ish
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  contract labor nurses and about 30 ish internal PRN agreement
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  arrangements where,
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  where temporary employees work for a higher pay rather than the PRN hours.
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  They work full-time hours. Um, and in June of 2023,
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  so one year later we were down to only two contract labor nurses in the
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  building. And those were both on a behavioral health unit that we just opened,
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  um,
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  in October of last year and down to only seven internal PRN agreements.
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  So the most successful project was definitely reducing that contract labor.
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  The issue to solve, um,
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  was that we had a full leadership change after a no confidence
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  vote by vote by the board,
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  and the staff in the hospital really needed healing.
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  But you can't grow with temporary people.
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  You can't build good culture with people that are not invested in the
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  organization. Um,
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  so my mission was to remove the contract labor nurses and nothing against
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  contract labor nurses. They're there when you need 'em, they do a great job,
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  but you really can't grow permanent culture, um, with temporary people.
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  So the driver I think was that we need to take care of our
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  staff. We needed to listen to them, we needed to make sure we were putting, um,
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  safety before financial gain.
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  And we really had to work on listening to the staff and finding out what they
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  needed. And of course, word of mouth, um,
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  travels really quickly through nursing. So, um,
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  if you're enjoying where you work,
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  then you tell your friends and you tell the other nurses that you know,
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  or that you've worked with in the past, and they wanna work at a good hospital.
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  And so they follow and they come.
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  So we've had a ton of success over the last year really removing contract labor
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  and now we have none. Um, and removing those internal agreements.
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  Got it, got it. Thank you so much for sharing.
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  That definitely sounds like a successful plan. Um,
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  and hopefully something you can keep up with in the next couple years.
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  As you know, the clinical workforce has changed a lot in the last few years.
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  What challenges are you still facing and how do you see the clinical workforce
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  evolving?
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  Yeah, I'm,
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  so I'm really proud to share that we have very limited available nursing
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  positions today at all. Um, in fact,
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  some of our departments in the hospital have a waiting list, um,
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  to be able to join our workforce. So, um, I'm really proud of that.
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  But of course it's not, um, without its challenges, like you said.
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  So though clinical workforce is definitely evolving, they are younger,
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  they are greener,
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  and they have a different work ethic than what my generation,
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  I'm a millennial than what my generation is really used to. And so, um,
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  we are learning that we have to meet them where they are, these younger nurses,
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  we have to ask them what they need and what they want.
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  And we have to really take time to challenge when someone says, we can't,
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  we can't do that, we can't go there, we can't change this.
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  And really ask why. Every time you hear that can't language.
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  So when someone says they can't do this, you wanna understand the, you know,
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  the where does this come from? Who said that you can't,
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  because I think a lot of organizations get stuck in old habits in tradition and
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  are afraid to make a lot of changes.
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  And so you really have to think about where the rules are made.
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  And a lot of times it's the organization making those rules themselves.
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  So who has the power or the autonomy to change those rules? Well, the,
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  the organization can so always ask why can't they change the rule
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  or the issue? And if staffing is a challenge,
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  then you really have to get creative, you know, ask why.
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  When you hear the can't ask what they want, um,
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  what is work-life balance to them and take care of them instead of, you know,
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  thinking about the traditions or what you're used to seeing or what you know
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  other people are doing,
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  it's okay to kind of step outside of those lines and do what works for you and
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  your organization.
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  Yeah. Great, great, great advice.
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  Thank you so much for giving us that insight and keeping on with the advice.
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  The last thing I wanted to ask you is,
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  what is your best advice for aspiring physician and nurse leaders?
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  Oh, absolutely. Um,
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  I think my best advice would be be intentional with your decisions.
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  Be consistent, almost being predictable. Um,
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  I think definitely challenge the status quo.
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  You don't always have to do what everybody else is doing. And then, um,
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  most of all, make sure you're on the right team. So I'm really blessed with, um,
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  full support from an amazing president and CFO and a great board.
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  They listen to my suggestions and they take a chance on me sometimes when I
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  wanna do something that's different or not what they're used to.
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  So make sure most of all, that you are on the right team.
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  Wonderful. Thank you so much for those final thoughts. Amber,
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  this has been an amazing and informative discussion. So again,
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  I wanna thank you so much for coming on Becker's Healthcare and I look forward
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  to connecting with you again soon.
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  Yeah, thank you so much.
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  It's so important for leaders at the top of organizations to keep learning,
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