MSU supports state nursing workforce, announces Mississippi Hospital Association’s Hoover in inaugural university Senior Nurse Fellowship role
Contact: Allison Matthews
MERIDIAN, Miss.—Mississippi State is laser-focused on meeting the state’s critical workforce needs through innovative programs—with special concentration on healthcare professions at MSU-Meridian.
As Mississippi faces a nursing shortage, the university’s School of Nursing is driving sustainable improvements in healthcare, and a prestigious new fellowship is connecting perspectives from registered nurses in hospital and clinical settings, hospital administrators and statewide professional associations. MSU’s inaugural Senior Nurse Fellow Kim Welch Hoover is helping identify and develop new solutions to persistent nursing workforce challenges. Generous and consistent support from The Riley Foundation has helped make the Senior Nurse Fellowship possible.
MSU Dean of Nursing Mary Stewart said the university wants to simultaneously benefit student nurses and their future endeavors, working nurses already embedded in the profession, and patients. Partnering with healthcare providers to strengthen nurse support systems—elevating nurse mentorship and expanding clinical preceptorship—is a key goal. Stewart said the state needs creative solutions that address urgent health needs and enhance retention of the healthcare workforce.
A registered nurse who also holds a Ph.D. in clinical health sciences and master’s in nursing from University of Mississippi Medical Center, Hoover is president and CEO of the Mississippi Hospital Association Foundation, as well as MHA’s former chief operating officer, and she began her MSU fellowship this fall. Stewart said Hoover brings a wealth of experiential and professional knowledge to the university’s efforts toward improving the state’s nursing workforce.
“We’re all going to need care in a hospital at some point, and we want the best nurses,” Hoover said. “Our student nurses and new graduates need to have good experiences in hospitals so they will want to stay and work in hospitals.”
The Senior Nurse Fellowship aims to utilize the experience and disciplinary knowledge of leaders in the profession, with potential to form a future thinktank, to help strengthen and support this critical workforce at the bedside.
Stewart said Hoover’s career allows her to represent a range of stakeholder viewpoints and bring together a broad network of healthcare leaders. A native of Vidalia, Louisiana, now based in Ridgeland, Hoover started work as an RN in Natchez in the late 1980s and then joined the nursing faculty at Alcorn State University. She was instrumental in the Mississippi Office of Nursing Workforce, a legislative funded initiative, as one of its early directors. She joined the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 2003, culminating in her role as dean and tenured professor of nursing until her 2018 retirement when she transitioned into MHA leadership roles.
“She has the perspective of looking at the nursing workforce across the state from the time our state government began looking at this sector,” said Stewart, citing Hoover as an example of experienced leaders in the profession with expertise and insights to offer. The Senior Nurse Fellowship allows Hoover and future fellows to affiliate with MSU for a special assignment, somewhat like a visiting professorship, Stewart explained.
“This is a new, innovative way to benefit from someone who has multiple layers of understanding, particularly from the hospital vantage point where we see the greatest nursing shortages,” Stewart said.
Hoover said she is honored to be selected as the first fellow and agreed that complex workforce challenges call for understanding of multifaceted issues and perspectives. End goals are to achieve sustainable improvements in healthcare, benefiting patient experiences and helping nurses have more satisfying careers.
“I started as a staff nurse and moved up into management and eventually executive leadership, so I’ve come to understand the cycle that impacts our nursing workforce,” said Hoover, who explained that hospitals have evolved over her career and face new challenges, such as higher turnover rates among healthcare providers. “We must have enough nurses in our hospitals where mentorship occurs, so student nurses and beginning nurses can get clinical experience that helps them gain confidence to care for, quite frankly, very complex patients.
“I want to find ways to partner with educational institutions and hospitals to provide training for nurse mentoring and precepting, to build up supportive infrastructure and help nurses learn more about themselves and their roles so that newer nurses would want to stay longer in hospitals rather than opting to leave in favor of other clinical settings,” Hoover said.
She noted that early in her career, about 65% of licensed RNs in Mississippi worked in hospitals, but now just over 40% do.
Hoover said bringing stakeholders together has great potential to make a difference.
“I know educators, and I know hospital leadership in our state. This fellowship gives me the opportunity to bridge the two, so we can work together on pilot projects, trial these pilot projects and scale up to make a difference in MSU nursing graduates and in hospitals where they are being trained and, hopefully, where they will continue to work. This work will benefit MSU and the hospitals that might choose to partner with MSU,” Hoover said.
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