Garret Armes
Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder, Nurses Lounge
Garret Armes is Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of Nurses Lounge, a career marketplace for nurses and a professional network built to connect nurses, schools, associations, and healthcare facilities on a single platform.
For more than 15 years, Garret has helped lead the evolution of Nurses Lounge from a nursing-focused platform into a broader career marketplace and workforce infrastructure model for the profession. His work sits at the intersection of platform operations, nurse career access, and healthcare staffing economics, with a focus on giving nurses better visibility into opportunity while helping healthcare facilities reduce reliance on overtime and traditional staffing agency markups.
At a Glance
ROLE
Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder
Leading strategy, operations, and execution at Nurses Lounge
Experience
15+ Years
Building and refining nurse-focused marketplace models
POINT OF VIEW
Workforce stability matters
A better answer than overtime or agency dependence
FOCUS
Nurse workforce access
Direct, trusted connections between nurses and facilities
✦ Bio
About Garret Armes
Garret Armes is Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of Nurses Lounge, where he helps lead the company’s platform strategy, operational execution, and market development. His work is centered on building a more connected nursing marketplace, one that serves nurses, healthcare facilities, schools, associations, and other stakeholders through a single professional network and workforce access platform.
Since joining Nurses Lounge as Co-Founder in 2008, Garret has played a long-term role in shaping how the platform works, how it serves distinct stakeholder groups, and how its value is communicated in a market that is often fragmented and operationally difficult to navigate. Over that time, his perspective has been shaped by direct exposure to the needs of nurses seeking better career visibility, employers trying to reduce staffing friction, and partner organizations looking for more direct access to the nursing profession.
A significant part of Garret’s work has involved helping translate that fragmented market into a more usable platform model. This includes improving how employers present opportunities, how nurses discover relevant jobs and resources, how schools and associations participate in the ecosystem, and how the platform can create stronger connections across the profession rather than operating as a narrow recruiting tool.
His point of view is that the nursing workforce problem is not only about supply. It is also about access, operating friction, and instability. When facilities are forced to respond to open shifts with overtime or agency labor, cost pressure rises, nurse burnout compounds, and continuity suffers. Garret has been a consistent advocate for a more direct model, one that reduces middleman dependency and gives healthcare organizations a more practical way to build workforce flexibility.
That work includes Nurse FLEX Pool, the Nurses Lounge workforce solution for healthcare facilities. Garret’s focus has been on helping shape a model that gives facilities direct access to a trusted local float pool through a flat monthly subscription fee, without hourly mark-up fees. In practical terms, that means a more predictable approach to contingent staffing, a better alternative to agency dependence, and a platform-based workflow built around direct sourcing, visibility, and operational control.
Throughout his time at Nurses Lounge, Garret has focused on practical model-building rather than abstract positioning. His work reflects a simple belief: nurses need a better-connected career marketplace, and healthcare facilities need a more sustainable staffing access model. At Nurses Lounge, that means combining a nurse-first professional network with tools that support career visibility, workforce access, and a more disciplined alternative to traditional staffing agency economics.
✦ Quote
Garret's Point of View
“The nursing shortage is real, but it is not just a supply problem. It is also a workforce stability problem. When a shift opens, too many facilities are still pushed toward the same two responses, overtime or agency. We believe there should be a third option: direct access to a trusted local nurse float pool through a predictable subscription model.”
That belief is central to the work Garret is helping lead at Nurses Lounge. His focus is not just on hiring volume, but on the structure around nurse staffing itself: how access is created, how labor costs become less predictable, and how healthcare organizations can reduce friction without pushing more strain onto nurses. By connecting the nursing profession on a single platform and reducing middleman friction, Nurses Lounge is working to create a more practical option for both nurses and healthcare facilities.
Areas of Focus
Nursing workforce strategy
Nurse staffing economics
Subscription-based staffing models
Local float pool design
Career marketplace platforms
Healthcare workforce technology
Nursing professional networks
Direct sourcing and agency alternatives
Why Nurses Lounge
Nurses Lounge was built to aggregate and connect the nursing profession on a single platform. That includes nurses, healthcare facilities, schools, associations, and other organizations that influence nursing careers, workforce access, and professional development.
For Garret, the opportunity has always been larger than a job board or a staffing tool. The goal is to create a more efficient marketplace for nurses while improving how opportunities, information, and workforce access move across the profession. On the facility side, that means helping reduce dependence on traditional staffing agencies and giving employers a more predictable way to access local nursing talent. On the nurse side, it means better visibility into opportunities, stronger professional connection, and more flexibility in how careers are built over time.
Media, Commentary, and Industry Engagement
Garret Armes contributes perspective on nursing workforce stability, healthcare staffing operations, nurse marketplace design, and subscription-based staffing models. His commentary often focuses on the operational realities behind nurse staffing, including overtime dependence, agency cost pressure, workforce flexibility, and the need for more direct access between facilities and local nurses.
Connect
Garret is interested in conversations with healthcare leaders, workforce strategists, industry partners, and members of the media who are focused on practical, scalable solutions for the nursing profession and the healthcare organizations that depend on it.
✦ FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Garret Armes?
Garret Armes is the Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of Nurses Lounge. He has spent more than 15 years helping build and refine the company as a career marketplace for nurses and a platform connecting nurses, healthcare facilities, schools, associations, and other stakeholders.
What is Garret Armes known for?
Garret is known for his long-standing role in building Nurses Lounge, with a focus on platform growth, operational execution, nurse career visibility, and more practical workforce access models for healthcare facilities.
What is Garret Armes’ role at Nurses Lounge?
As Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder, Garret helps lead platform operations, market execution, and growth initiatives across Nurses Lounge, including the continued development of Nurse FLEX Pool as a subscription-based workforce model for healthcare facilities.
What is Garret Armes’ background in healthcare?
Garret’s work has focused on the nursing profession through Nurses Lounge, including nurse opportunity access, employer outreach, professional networking, workforce platform development, and staffing model innovation.
What is Garret Armes’ perspective on nurse staffing?
Garret’s view is that healthcare facilities need a better alternative to the traditional choice between overtime and staffing agencies. Through Nurses Lounge and Nurse FLEX Pool, he is focused on a model that gives facilities direct access to a trusted local float pool without hourly mark-up fees and with greater operational control.