Massachusetts hospitals have made meaningful progress rebuilding their workforces, but persistent vacancies and changing clinician expectations continue to challenge traditional approaches to recruitment and coverage.

At UMass Memorial Health, that has meant looking beyond full-time and part-time hiring to create more flexible ways for clinicians to join the organization, pick up shifts, and experience the health system before making a longer-term commitment.

In this session, Kait Urlaub, VP, Talent Acquisition & Workforce Development at UMass Memorial Health, and J.J. Ewing, Chief Nurse Executive at ShiftMed, will share how a more flexible clinical workforce can support talent acquisition, nursing operations, and broader workforce strategy. Urlaub will offer a firsthand look at how the model was built, from preparing clinicians to be shift-ready through systemwide orientation and Epic readiness, to determining where and how to introduce flexible talent across the organization.

The conversation will go beyond the strategy to explore what implementation looks like in practice, how responsibilities are shared across teams, what they are learning along the way, and what they would approach differently as the model evolves.

Audience Takeaways:

• Learn how the team determined which clinical roles and areas to prioritize and how flexible work can create an additional pathway for attracting clinicians.
• Understand how talent acquisition, nursing operations, and finance work together to support the model and where ownership sits across the organization.
• Get a candid look at the early indicators the team is watching, lessons learned during implementation, and what they would do differently as the program grows.