Good Help Is Hard to Find
And even harder to keep, as I — and probably you — know all too well.
T
he core of our editorial team here at Outpatient Surgery Magazine
has been together longer than most married couples.
Thirteen years for executive editor Daniel Cook.
Ten years for art director Ethan Anderson.
And 15 years have somehow passed since I began editing a magazine
about the business of running a surgical facility.
But we've had to change the names on the editorial masthead for each of
the last 3 issues due to a recent rash of turnovers. Two associate editors
resigned without giving us any notice, one after 90 days and one after 7 days
(the ink on her business cards hadn't dried yet!). Another was nice enough to
give us 6 days notice when she, too, left after 90 days. Not sure if the fact that
they were all in their 20s is a coincidence or a Millennial thing. Anyway ...
Before these sudden departures, we'd had the same team together for
more than 5 years. You don't realize — and appreciate — what you have until
you lose it, right?
So now comes the time-consuming search for their replacements: place the
ad, comb through resumes and writing samples, chat on the phone, schedule
interviews, check references and then, you hope and pray, make the right
decision. In our case, that means finding talented and ambitious writers and
reporters to interview nurses, anesthesia providers and surgeons about top-
ics they know next to nothing about.
I got to thinking about all this turnover turmoil when it dawned on me that
2 of our departed editors worked with Andine Gilmore, BSN, RN, CNOR, on
this month's Staffing column. We hired the one who left us after 7 days
because she did a very good job on her writing test, which was to ghostwrite
for Ms. Gilmore what would become "An Internship Program for New
Surgical Nurses" on page 16 .
In a first, our Employee For a Week resigned by email, firing off this cruel
8 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • F E B R U A R U Y 2 0 1 8
Editor's Page
Dan O'Connor
