DESCRIPTION

Mercy Medical Center uses (paid) job shadowing as a way to introduce incumbent 
health care workers to the next step on the career ladder.  Hence, CNAs and 
other entry level workers will job shadow LVNs and LVNs will in turn job shadow 
RNs. 

Once the interest in advancement has been generated, the hospital is ready to 
support any employee who wants to get the necessary training.  They pay all 
costs incurred for education as long as the students are accepted into one of their 
partner programs at Siskiyous and Shasta Community colleges.  They also 
provide students with the opportunity to reduce their workload—and/or to put their 
hours in when they can—while they are in school, without losing their good health 
benefits. 

EVIDENCE OF IMPACT/SUCCESS

With an ever growing enrollment of incumbent health care workers from Mercy 
Medical Center and other local health care facilities, Siskiyous Community 
College’s LVN program currently has 100 LVN applicants a year competing for 
30+ slots.  

Mercy Medical Center has become known as a great place to work and nurses 
have begun to call from afar to talk about relocating to the facility.  Mr. Eagleman, 
VP of Patient Services and the founder of the job shadowing project described 
above and of several other employee recruitment and retention initiatives, 
attributes this achievement to the hospital’s commitment to its employees’ 
professional development and to their general sense of job satisfaction.  He adds 
that he “has made retention the number one priority of nursing managers at the 
facility and that one of his main strategies for increasing retention is to provide 
incumbent health care workers with a wide range of advancement opportunities”