SSM Health’s nurse influencer strategy causes recruitment to surge

SSM Health leaders maintain their nurse influencer program has led to three years of record RN hiring, surpassing 2,000 hires annually since launching in 2022. Employed RNs comprised 85% of full- and part-time hours in July 2026, up from 70% in 2023, due to the system’s success in converting travel nurses into core staff. The St. Louis-based system says that for the first time, it is spending more on contract labor for non-nursing clinical roles than for nursing. Influencers, whose videos receive millions of views each, fuse content creation and recruitment. A nurse influencer who makes a video often recruits candidates who engage with that video and makes offers quickly. (Becker’s Hospital Review article, 8/31/26)