Primary care, hospital medicine, behavioral health, and multi-specialty physician recruiting.
Elina Sindhu
Healthcare Recruiting
Director of Nursing Recruiters
A Director of Nursing is one of the most important leadership hires you'll make. We help healthcare organizations recruit experienced nursing leaders who strengthen operations, support clinical teams, and lead with confidence.
- Permanent DON and CNO placement - no upfront fees
- SNF, hospital, and health system searches
- Regulatory history, survey experience, and clinical leadership verified
Trusted by skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies & healthcare providers
Director of nursing roles and settings we recruit for
Nursing leadership
DONs and CNOs currently leading facilities - not candidates between roles or stepping into leadership for the first time. We recruit from DON through CNO depending on setting and organizational size.
Role types include
Director of Nursing (DON), Chief Nursing Officer (CNO), Vice President of Nursing, VP of Patient Care Services, Regional Director of Nursing (RDON), Director of Clinical Services, and Assistant Director of Nursing (ADON) for succession planning purposes.
Settings
Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs), Long-Term Care (LTC), Assisted Living with skilled nursing, Acute Care Hospitals, Academic Medical Centers, Behavioral Health Hospitals, Rehabilitation Hospitals, Multi-site/Regional SNF Operators, Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs), and Health Systems.
For CNO and VP of Nursing searches at health system or academic medical center level, check out our Healthcare Executive Search practice.
What we evaluate before presenting candidates
The strongest DON and CNO candidates are already employed and performing well. Our nursing leadership searches start by mapping who's currently leading nursing departments at comparable organizations. Before a candidate is introduced, we check for:
Active RN license and state licensure status
Current licensure and certifications are confirmed
Current or recent DON, CNO, or Director of Clinical Services experience
We focus on leaders who are actively running teams, not those who've been away from the role for years.
Setting match
SNF/LTC, acute care, behavioral health, or multi-site
Regulatory history
Survey experience, deficiency management, QAPI involvement
CMS compliance competency
Including staffing ratios, MDS oversight, and infection control
BSN/MSN credentials
Required degrees and credentials are confirmed before we make an introduction.
Leadership tenure and stability
How long in role, reason for considering a move. We want to understand what's motivating the move, not just where they've worked
Compensation expectations, geographic requirements, and timeline
We make sure expectations line up before interviews begin.
Our goal is to introduce candidates who are prepared to lead, not someone who's just looking for their next position.
One vacancy. Facility-wide consequences.
When a Director of Nursing leaves, the impact rarely stops with one vacancy. Staffing decisions slow, nurse managers lose their day-to-day leader, quality initiatives lose momentum, and the workload often shifts to an ADON who wasn't hired to lead the department alone, or an Administrator already balancing everything else.
In skilled nursing, there's also a compliance layer most leadership roles don't carry. MDS oversight, QAPI participation, survey readiness, and staffing stability all depend on strong nursing leadership. CMS's Value-Based Purchasing program also ties staff turnover to reimbursement, making DON turnover more than just an HR issue.
The best Directors of Nursing are already leading nursing departments somewhere else. They're not browsing job boards between shifts. They're managing teams, preparing for state surveys, and keeping their departments running. That's why many DON searches stall. Job postings only reach people actively looking, not the experienced leaders already succeeding in the role. Our recruiters focus on that second group, building relationships with DONs who aren't job hunting but would consider the right facility, the right leadership team, and the right opportunity. That's what separates a dedicated director nursing recruiter from a generalist search firm.
If you're also filling other nursing roles across the organization, our team recruits Charge Nurses, Registered Nurses, ICU Nurses, and Nurse Practitioners through the same direct-outreach process.
Meet some of our recruiters
You'll work with recruiters who understand the realities of today's nursing market and the specialties they recruit for.
Behavioral health physicians, emergency medicine, and difficult-to-fill physician specialties.
Ray Shimray
Healthcare Recruiting
Chief Medical Officers, Medical Directors, physician leadership, and executive healthcare hiring.
Annie Larkin
Healthcare Recruiting
70+ additional recruiters dedicated to your specific hiring needs
Our recent placements
Shared anonymously at the client's request.
Director of Nursing
31 days
Chief Nursing Officer
44 days
Regional Director of Nursing
43 days
Frequently asked questions
Director of Nursing recruitment is a core part of our healthcare practice, not just another role we fill. As a director nursing recruiter focused on healthcare, our team has placed DONs across skilled nursing long-term care, hospitals, and behavioral health, so we understand the clinical, operational, and regulatory demands that come with the role.
Confidentiality is built into every search. We don't advertise your opening unless you ask us to, and we never share a candidate's information without their permission. Whether you're replacing a current DON or hiring discreetly, we keep the process confidential from start to finish.
Yes, absolutely. Under 42 CFR Part 483, CMS requires skilled nursing facilities to have a full-time RN serving as Director of Nursing. That person also cannot serve as the facility Administrator.
A DON vacancy isn't just another open role. It's a compliance risk that state surveyors will notice. Many facilities use an interim DON to bridge the gap, but interim coverage doesn't eliminate the regulatory risk and comes with its own costs. Hiring a permanent Director of Nursing is the only long-term solution.
Promoting from within is often the best place to start. An ADON who already knows your staff, residents, and day-to-day operations can often step into the role successfully with the right support.
External recruitment usually makes more sense when there isn't a ready internal successor, the timeline is tight, or you need someone who has already led a nursing department through a state survey, staffing crisis, or quality improvement initiative. In those situations, experience matters. We regularly help organizations evaluate both options before recommending a search.
CMS's Five-Star Quality Rating System includes staffing stability and staff turnover as part of the staffing domain. A DON vacancy, or frequent turnover in the role, can signal instability and affect your rating.
Clinical oversight gaps during the transition can also impact quality measures. CMS's Value-Based Purchasing program tracks turnover across eight performance measures, so DON instability can influence reimbursement as well as day-to-day operations. That's why making the right hire matters for more than just filling the position.
Of course, we recruit both, but they're very different searches with different candidate pools.
A Director of Nursing is an operational leadership role, most commonly found in skilled nursing facilities and long-term care. The role focuses on clinical operations, staffing, regulatory compliance, and survey readiness.
A Chief Nursing Officer or VP of Nursing is a senior executive role within a hospital or health system. These leaders oversee nursing strategy, governance, Magnet initiatives, and system-wide quality. The experience, credentials, compensation, and scope of responsibility are very different.
For CNO and VP of Nursing searches, our executive search team leads those engagements.
Finding the right Director of Nursing starts with a conversation
Every DON search starts with a detailed briefing on your facility, leadership team, and what success looks like in the role before we introduce a single candidate.
No upfront fees
