Fred Hunter: Bedside Manner Raises
Industry Standard

One dilemma that hospital dramas like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “E.R.” don’t address is the national shortage of nurses, celebrity or otherwise. Alum Fred Hunter (Class of ’93, B.S.N.) faces this challenge daily, as chief nursing officer of Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital (DFMH), which is part of the Centinela Freeman HealthSystem (CFHS). His decision to enter hospital administration was inspired by his own frustrations while on the job as a nurse.

“I always wanted more,” he says. “I don’t want to say that being at the bedside is less. But I wanted to get myself into a position where I could make changes to the things that used to bother me when I was practicing at the bedside. Now I have the joy of sculpting the nursing culture at Memorial the way I think it should be. There was a time when I didn’t always understand these issues behind running a hospital. I can now educate the nurses as to ‘This is why it is this way.’ It’s important for nurses to know that they’re involved in what’s going on at the hospital.”

Hunter is responsible for approximately 400 nurses and works constantly to not only increase the ranks, but to make an investment in nurses who are already at his facility. One strategy was to alter the industry practice of generous hire-on bonuses to fill vacancies in Daniel Freeman’s emergency room.

“We had a hire-on bonus for new nurses who came here from another hospital, where we would pay that nurse $10,000 over two years, which is not that unusual,” he says. “Then there was a recruitment bonus that we would pay our nurse $3,500 if they could find somebody and bring them over. What we recently did was switch it to $3,500 to recognize our nurse when they started, and give her or him $10,000 to bring somebody here.

“That is the challenge, in my opinion, of what nursing is dealing with today in all hospitals, which is retaining the staff you have,” he notes. “There is always going to be a hospital out there that offers a hire-on bonus. Some places offer as much as $20,000 just for nurses to come and work for them. Those nurses are not there for the long haul, they’ll just get their money, and go to the next hospital to get more. So, it’s all about who you have working for you now, and keeping those people satisfied.”

While Hunter knows that money talks, he realizes that nurses do, too. He strives to build a postive work environment at DFMH and at its Centinela and Marina campuses, in the hope of inspiring them to encourage colleagues at other hospitals to work for CFHS.

“If we take care of the nurses we have in our hospitals, they are our recruiters,” he says. “If you have a good working environment, your nurses will tell their friends, ‘This is what happens at this hospital, this is what Fred does for us, this is what we are able to do.’ Although we have marketing and advertise in nursing periodicals, to me, that’s something that everybody else is doing. We have to do something special.”

Hunter credits “the innovation of Dominguez Hills” with providing him with his nursing degree despite the remoteness of the high desert area he lived in at the time. A satellite program that was taught by local senior nurses and provided video courses with instructors who were available by phone, a precursor to the CSUDH online nursing program available today.

“I lived in a small town with a community college,” he recalls. “I would have had to travel at least two hours to get to a college or university. I was married and had a young daughter. We weren’t about to move. I want to thank Cal State Dominguez Hills for bringing that level of education to my community. Otherwise, I would never have been able to do it.”

For more information on the CSUDH School of Nursing, visit http://www.csudh.edu/hhs/don/.

For more information on the Centinela Freeman HealthSystem, visit
http://www.centinelafreeman.com/default.

- Joanie Harmon