Happy Valley Hospital is a community-based health care facility with a reputation for providing quality health care services to the residents of Happy Valley and its surrounding markets. The hospital has a 288-bed acute care facility with a twelve suite family oriented birthing center, a forty four bed long-term care inpatient facility, and a fourteen bed inpatient rehabilitation unit.

Happy Valley has two major competitors, CMC and GH. CMC have four hundred beds and is a tertiary acute care facility. It specializes in women and children’s services, serves as the regional trauma center, has a large and active emergency department, and provides cardiac services, including open-heart surgery. GH has two hundred beds, a small cancer center, and a kidney dialysis unit.

Happy Valley Hospital has received numerous recognition awards for excellence in health care during the past five years. Because of its reputation for clinical excellence, it has not had difficulty in retaining its nursing and clinical staff.

However, recently there have been changes in leadership at CMC at the levels of CEO and Vice President of nursing. Employees of Happy Valley Hospital in several key areas have been drawn to work at CMC because of the promises made by new management for better pay and working conditions. They have begun to relocate in large numbers to CMC. Happy Valley now faces a serious employee shortage among registered nurses, radiology technicians, and respiratory therapists.

On the basis of your understanding of the above case study, express your views on the following:

• How should the management at Happy Valley Hospital retain their existing staff members?
• What steps should the management at Happy Valley Hospital take to ensure smooth running of the hospital operations in such a crisis situation?
• In your opinion, what should the recruitment team at Happy Valley Hospital do to overcome serious employee shortage among registered nurses, radiology technicians, and respiratory therapists?