Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Nurse Wars Over But Hospitals Scramble

The Los Angeles Times and Dog Trainer has Search for Nurses in California Is Feverish

Competition to hire nurses in California is so intense that some headhunters routinely make cold calls to nursing stations at rival hospitals, desperate for recruits.

Others are sending out direct-mail pitches that read like time-share come-ons. Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, for example, offers nurses a $200 gift card just to come in and take a look around.

And in one extreme case, a nurse-staffing firm is using a $10-million Newport Beach mansion as a lure.

Even the recruiters are getting recruited.

“I probably get a call once a week,” said Robin Ludewig, director of nurse recruitment for UCLA . “It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.”

Scrambling to comply with California’s first-of-its-kind law mandating 1 nurse for every 5 patients in most wards starting this year, hospitals are in a hiring frenzy reminiscent of Silicon Valley’s lust for engineers in 1999. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this month dropped his fight to suspend the law, leaving hospitals to cope with a labor shortage that is expected to grow for decades.

“We had a shortage before the ratio,” said Sue Albert, who heads the nursing school at College of the Canyons in Valencia. Now, “it’s a free-for-all in the nursing market.”

And the cost of medical care will go up and up and………..