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How well are you selling your facility?

By Patrick Fuerstenau on Oct 07, 2008 in Hospital Staffing

I just read an interesting article in Managed Executive Healthcare about ways to improve your methods for finding new healthcare talent. There were a lot of great take aways, including evaluating talent beyond technical skills, understanding the real reasons people are leaving your hospital and interviewing properly. You can read it here, but one area that really stuck out to me was the emphasis on improving your ability to sell your facility.

The need to do this is one of the reasons that we have structured our system to have one dedicated client manager for each hospital. Not only does this help them sell your facility to nurses and allied health professionals better, but even the part of the country you areÂ located in.

The article talks about how being strong in this area can give your facility a real advantage in the healthcare recruiting war. Some simple steps you can take if you work with Medical Solutions is to be sure to send your Client Manager any marketing materials about your facility or the surrounding area so they can convey that to our Recruiters.

Nurses voice their concerns over the nursing shortage.

By Patrick Fuerstenau on Oct 07, 2008 in Hospital Staffing, Nursing Shortage

As you face the day to day challenges of staffing your hospital facility, one area you may not always consider is the way it is affecting the mindset of your current nursing staff. A recent study by the American Nurses Association looked at this issue specifically and came to some disturbing, but probably not too surprising conclusions. You can read them all here, but the crux of the press release was:

73% of nurses don’t think the staffing on their unit or shift is sufficient.
59.8% of the nurses said they knew someone who left direct care nursing because of concerns about safe staffing
Of the 51.9% of the nurses that are considering leaving their current position, 46% say it is because of inadequate staffing
51.7% of nurses surveyed thought the quality of nursing care on their unit has declined over the last year
48.2% of the responding nurses would not feel confident having someone they care about receiving care in their own facility

These results illustrate how important it is to keep your nursing staff large enough to not only provide patient care, but also take the pressure off your current staff.

Do staffing levels affect incidences of workplace violence in healthcare facilities?

By Patrick Fuerstenau on Oct 07, 2008 in Hospital Staffing, Nursing Shortage

According to a recent story in the New York Times, low staffing levels in facilities combined with the nationwide nursing shortage increase the risk of an assault. The article also notes that nurses and other personal care workers suffer injuries from these attacks at a rate 12 times higher than the overall private sector.

Nurses and other personal care workers bear the brunt of such attacks, with 25 injuries annually resulting in days off from work for every 10,000 full-time workers at 12 times the rate of the overall private sector, according to the bureau. The most dangerous settings are psychiatric units and nursing homes, where patients are often confused, disoriented or suffering from mental ailments, as well as emergency rooms, where long waits for care can anger patients, and the people with them.
Low morale is another side effect of these attacks if the staff doesn’t feel management’s concern or support in these matters.

What can be done to protect your staff without hiring more security or adding an airport-like screening? Increasing staffing levels seems to be the surest way to reduce these attacks. Another benefit of increasing staffing levels is the positive effect it can have on your patient care.
Every facility must ask themselves if their staffing levels are putting their employees at risk, and if so is it cheaper to add staff or to settle a lawsuit that could result from an assault.

Minimum Staffing Levels: Essential for quality care

By Patrick Fuerstenau on Sep 19, 2008 in Nursing Shortage, Travel Nurses

As of January 1, 2008 California has implemented it’s historic safe hospital staffing law which states that every hospital must abide by certain ratios for every department within the care facility. These ratios have transformed hospital care and helped increase patient safety by ordering them to maintain minimum, specific nurse-to-patient staffing ratios for all hospital units at all times. The ratios vary from department to department, for example, 1:3 in Step Down, 1:4 in Telemetry and 1:4 in other Specialty Care units.

Now that California has shown that this can work, nurses elsewhere around the country are demanding the same of their states. The National Nurses Organizing Committee agrees that this is one effective way to quell the nursing shortages in hospitals around the country. Since the law has been in effect in California, some 80,000 have come into workforce, either returning or new. More lives are being saved, patient needs are fully assessed and nurses are staying at the bedside longer which in turn is reducing the effect of the shortage.

The hospital industry has tried to overturn the new laws, but the popularity among patients, nurses and communities is too strong. Nurses who have had experience with the ratio law have praised its effectiveness and nurses elsewhere reiterate the importance of having similar laws in their own states.
Not only does patient care increase, so does the workforce. “Before the ratios were enacted, we had complete turnover of our entire RN staff twice in three years,” said Trande Phillips, RN, Kaiser Permanente, Walnut Creek, CA. “We were always working short staffed and patients suffered. Now the only time nurses leave is if they are moving or going back to school.”

With the laws in place, nurses have more time to do their jobs properly. There’s time to fully check charts and do the patient and family teaching that is essential to avoiding future complications. I agree that this is a step in the right direction. However this is only part of the solution, there are still many factors to the shortage that must be addressed. It is a good start though.

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