VA Nurses Demand Additional Hires, VA Disagrees

Nurses at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) rallied outside VA headquarters in Washington, DC, demanding that the agency hire more frontline nurses.

The rally was organized by National Nurses United (NNU) and National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC), which represent more than 15,000 registered nurses at VA facilities. Nurses came from all over the country to demand action.

The nurses say they’re understaffed, overworked, and that the VA is not doing enough to hire additional personnel, claiming that the agency has a “hiring freeze” in place.

The union says there are some 66,000 vacancies across the VA health care system, with more than 13,000 of those in nursing positions.

“We feel the lack of these nurses in our faculties every day — every single day,” said NNU vice president Irma Westmoreland. “We feel that we are chronically understaffed in nursing, and that it erodes the patient care that we’re able to provide for our veterans.”

A VA inspector general report from August 2023 found that 93 percent of VA facilities reported a severe shortage of nurses.

VA Disputes Those Numbers

The VA says there is no nationwide hiring freeze.

VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes said that over the past three years, the VA increased its nursing workforce by 14,000 positions and is making inroads with retention.

“VA is also retaining our great nurses, with turnover rates currently at 3.4% -- far outperforming the private sector,” said Hayes.

And while VA is scaling back hiring plans from its record 61,000 new hires in 2023 and is planning to cut 10,000 positions under its fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget proposal, VA Secretary Denis McDonough said the reductions would largely be achieved through attrition.

Private Health Care Concerns

In addition to the workforce concerns, the nurses rallying said they wanted to raise awareness of VA funding going to private health care for veterans since the passage of the 2018 MISSION Act, which allows veterans to obtain non-VA care when the service is unavailable in a timely manner at a VA facility.

“Hospitals are chronically understaffed, while billions of dollars from the VA are going to the private sector,” said nurse Monica Coleman of the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in Chicago. “The VA needs to reinvest in itself, including hiring in critical areas.”