The 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 topics 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 breakup note at 8:08 p.m. of what turned out to be her last day with us:

I apologize for doing this via email. I was offered a position at another company that's more in line with my goals, and I've accepted. Their training class starts tomorrow so today was my last day. Good luck and thank you.

Inspired by this incredible experience and concerned over our suddenly sinking retention rate, I wondered which was the most challenging element of staffing: recruiting, training or retaining. Given the game of musical chairs we've been playing in the adjoining cubicles by the printers of late, I'd say retaining was the hardest. But when we polled more than 300 of our readers last month, 40% said recruiting was the toughest, while 13% went with retaining and only 9% chose training. Those numbers don't add up to 100 because 38% took the easy way out by selecting "all of the above."

Ms. Gilmore's article details her hospital's nursing intern program that takes newly minted RNs who had limited exposure to the OR in nursing school and trains them in the ways of the operating room and of the hospital during a 6- to 7-month long didactic and hands-on competency program. When they complete their internship, the trained nurses are confident and comfortable in scrubs. They're also loyal and committed to the people and the place that trained them.

Of the 21 nurses who completed their internships and became staff circulators, Ms. Gilmore says 9, including herself, have stayed in the surgical department for at least 12 months.

"Many might not have considered OR nursing as a career choice without the specialty training we provided," she writes.

Maybe we should start a Medical Trade Publishing Internship for all new editorial hires here at the magazine. At the very least, they might stick around for more than a week. OSM