VA secretary Robert McDonald said this week that meeting the department’s aggressive recruitment goals would be a tough challenge. He allowed that he was “worried” because the department needs to bring in “tens of thousands of new doctors, new nurses, new clinicians,” no small task.
McDonald has been making the rounds at medical colleges on a recruitment tour promoting the VA’s mission of increasing quality medical care for the nation’s veterans and their families.
The VA also recently announced initiatives such a new nursing academic partnership focused on psychiatric and mental health care, partnerships with DoD Health Affairs, Army, Navy, and Air Force to improve recruitment of recently or soon to be discharged health care professionals, an expanded pilot program to recruit combat medics and corpsmen as clinicians, shared credentials for VA and DoD healthcare providers, expanded loan repayments, and revised pay tables.
