Healthcare Roundtable Highlights Training and Staffing Challenges

April 28, 2025

WorkForce Central’s Business Solutions team recently hosted an enlightening industry roundtable that brought together healthcare leaders, educators, and workforce professionals to tackle one of Pierce County’s most pressing challenges: the growing shortage of trained healthcare workers. The conversation focused on identifying challenges and brainstorming collaborative solutions to strengthen our local healthcare pipeline.

Workforce & Credentialing Gaps

One of the clearest takeaways from the discussion was the ongoing difficulty in hiring for high-demand roles, particularly Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs), behavioral health professionals, nurses, and imaging specialists. Despite strong student interest in healthcare careers, a critical bottleneck exists: a shortage of credentialed instructors—especially in Registered Nursing (RN) and Medical Assisting (MA) programs—is capping enrollment and limiting how many new workers can enter the field.

Tacoma Community College has the facilities and capacity to teach up to 200 students every session, but due to a lack of teachers, they are only teaching around 20. Without instructors, even the best facilities can’t be put to use, delaying students’ progress and deepening the workforce gap.

Retention & Burnout

It’s not just about bringing new people into the field—it’s also about keeping them there. Behavioral health organizations shared staggering turnover rates, with some reporting as high as 250% turnover over just two years. Burnout, unsustainable workloads, low wages, and a lack of career advancement opportunities were all identified as core challenges.

Roundtable participants emphasized that improving retention must be a priority. There was strong enthusiasm for strategies focused on organizational culture and mission alignment, more flexible scheduling, and leadership development to help workers see a future for themselves within the field.

Training Capacity & Industry Alignment

Another major hurdle is the persistent shortage of clinical placements—critical hands-on learning opportunities students need to complete their training. This issue affects programs across the board, especially in nursing and allied health.

There was a shared sense of urgency around breaking down silos between education and industry. Participants expressed a desire to explore new ways to support instructional staff, align the curriculum with employer needs, and make training more accessible and responsive to real-world conditions.

A New Vision: Shared, Flexible Faculty

Amidst these challenges, one especially promising idea emerged: developing a flexible instructional model that allows current healthcare professionals, supported by their employers, to teach part-time across multiple institutions. Instead of relying solely on full-time faculty, this approach would create a shared talent pool of qualified practitioners who rotate between colleges or training programs.

This model could address faculty shortages, bring real-time field experience into the classroom, and open new professional development paths for healthcare workers.

What’s Next: Faculty Innovation & Collaboration Session

In response to the energy around this idea, WorkForce Central is planning a follow-up Faculty Innovation & Collaboration Session. This session will reunite roundtable participants to co-design a vision for this new faculty model, identify barriers and opportunities, and lay the groundwork for a pilot initiative in partnership with local colleges and healthcare providers.

The roundtable made one thing clear: no single organization can solve healthcare workforce challenges alone. It will take cross-sector collaboration and creative thinking. WorkForce Central is proud to help lead these conversations and support the development of a stronger, more sustainable healthcare workforce for our community.

Stay tuned for updates from the upcoming collaboration session—and if you’re interested in getting involved, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us at [email protected]