CNO Influence Key to Advanced Nurse Education

In addition to flexible scheduling, hospitals might offer some types of classes on their own campus.

Kovner also suggests a more creative—and likely harder to achieve—solution for hospitals: Help to remove busy work from nurses' lives.

"One of the big hospitals in New York has a concierge service for their employees," she says. "At a central place in the organization you can do everything from get your dry cleaning to get repairs on your car."

Plus, she adds, service providers would likely jump at the chance to have a constant and reliable client base among the hospital employees.

In addition to time, cost was cited as a major barrier for nurses. Kovner says she's surprised at how many nurses don't have tuition benefits to encourage them to go onto school. Again, it's an area in which hospitals could lend a hand.

"They could provide some kind of financial incentives," for going back to school Kovner says, such as paying for schooling in exchange for nurses promising that they work a certain number of years at the organization.

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