Covenant hiring at all levels as hospitals struggle with staffing shortages

LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) - Covenant has staffing shortages in every area of the hospital, but mainly in nursing. Covenant Health has more than 200 job openings for Lubbock alone.

The Talent Pipeline Program Manager, Terri Morris, says Covenant is short in all positions ranging from door greeter to experienced RNs. There’s a real shortage of nurses, which Morris describes as a crucial position for hospitals.

“We have to make sure that we’re providing safe patient care that the equity or illness of the patient matches what kind of nursing care they get,” Morris said.

Morris says this all started when the pandemic struck.

“With COVID, we lost a lot of our healthcare professionals that just didn’t want to be in a hospital. There was a lot of unknowns, and then of course the nursing travel industry is big,” Morris said.

She says nurses may be retiring early due to burn-out, so Covenant is trying to help its employees stay on the job.

“Our hospital’s done a lot to combat that. We have a lot of mental health initiatives for our caregivers, to help them get through that burn-out,” Morris said.

Wages have increased as employees become harder to find, and Covenant is struggling with those costs.

“We are a nonprofit hospital, so we’re still in that market of having to compete for all levels of education, all levels of physicians from entry all the way up to your professional level,” Morris said.

Covenant has four campuses to fill with employees in Lubbock, Plainview, Levelland and Hobbs.

Morris wants to emphasize you don’t have to be a registered nurse to get hired at a Covenant hospital. They’re in need of social workers, case managers, and many other positions.

“We’re really short in almost all positions,” Morris said. “I tell everyone we’re like our own city and I think people always think nurses and doctors.”

Morris says the good news is graduate nurses can now walk across the stage out of nursing school and into almost any position with a lot more opportunities before getting their certification to be an RN.

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