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Can a hospital extend a temporary travel nursing assignment?

By Jeff on Jul 09, 2010 in Demystifying healthcare staffing, Healthcare Staffing, Travel Nurses

Ideally of course you would like to fill your open nursing position with a permanent nurse or have a staffing plan in place that lets you know in advance when you are going to need temporary staff to supplement your full time staff.

However, if neither of those are the case, then yes most healthcare staffing companies can extend a travel assignment. With enough notice, most of the time, they will be able to provide you with the same travel nurse who worked the first assignment. But keep in mind that that is really up to the nurse more than the company, which is why it is important to provide a great experience for your travel nurses like you do your permanent staff.

If that travel nurse does move onto another a hospital or company, again enough notice is important, but most companies are going to be able to provide you with another RN to take the assignment.

It is always to the advantage of the travel nursing company to extend assignments, it saves them money in housing, insurance and marketing costs to keep travelers working in longer assignments so don’t hesitate to discuss the option with your healthcare staffing company.

9 Easy Ways to Welcome Travel Nurses to Your Unit

By Jeff on Mar 06, 2010 in Featured, Hospital Staffing, Travel Nurses

Daily life in a hospital unit can be busy and hectic, especially one in need of temporary staff, but one of the best ways to get the most out of the travel nurses that come to work for you is make them feel welcomed.

They are there to help you and your staff so why not do a few things to celebrate them. We are not talking a party here (but hey, who doesn’t love a party), but just some simple steps you can take to show them you are glad they are there.

Here are a few ideas:

Give them a small gift on their first day
Make a welcome sign they see when they walk in on their first day
Set them up with a travel nurse buddy
Have some of the team take them to lunch
Check in with them a couple times during the day
Give them a list of the best places to eat in the area for lunch
Give them a guidebook to your city
Plan a night out with the team
Have a breakfast/snack reception

What about in your unit? What things do you do when a new travel nurse, or perm nurse for that matter, start in your unit?

Makeover your unit by integrating travel nurses

By Jeff on Jan 21, 2010 in Featured, Hospital Staffing, Nursing Staff Management, Travel Nurses

Travel nurses are great at stepping in right away and helping out. But any little thing you as a nurse manager can do to help speed up that process will help her acclimate faster and in the end help your unit perform better.

Integrating a travel nurse into your unit is really just a matter of making sure four things happen.

They know they are welcome
They know your policies, procedures and systems
They know what is expected of them
They know the doctors

Aside from the standard travel nurse orientation program, one of the most simple ways to do this is through designating a travel nursing buddy for your travel nurses.

What does a travel nurse buddy do? Creating this role is really just formalizing what you would hope is going on anyway, that someone is there to answer a travel nurses questions, help her with any new systems she may not be familiar with and just be a friend.

There are multiple ways to do this, but a few options are:

Choose an experienced nurse for each traveling nurse to pair up with and let them know that they are someone they can go to when you are not available and give each traveler their own buddy
Choose an experienced nurse who can be the go to nurse for all the travelers

There are pros and cons of both approaches, and they are by no means the only options out there, it really just depends on your units situation, but whatever approach you use the key is to make sure the travel nurse buddy is aware of the four goals of the program and has the kind of personality that makes people feel welcome and experienced enough to handle it.

This can also be a great way to empower your permanent nursing staff and give the some leadership experience, which will only make them better nurses.

Are healthcare staffing companies a haven for bad nurses? Follow-up.

By Jeff on Dec 23, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing, Travel Nurses

In my last post I talked about an article in The Los Angeles Times on Sunday, Dec. 6th called, Temp Firms a Magnet for Unfit Nurses, that discussed the quality, or lack of it, of nurses working through staffing firms. My point in my last post was that the article placed a lot of the blame on the staffing agencies and not the nurses themselves or hospitals that don’t check on the agencies they work with. I also talked about research that showed that temporary nurses are as, if not more, qualified than permanent nurses. But one area I did not fully address was what could be done about it.

Well in a recent article titled “Union: Healthy Environments, Better Orientation Can Solve Temp Nurse Issue” at HealthLeadersMedia, Media Rebecca Hendren discussed the article with some nurse executives from the new National Nurses United union who brought up some great points in response to the Los Angeles article including:

Acknowledging that in some circumstances travel nurses can be a real blessing for hospitals, but focus should still be on building a stable long-term workforce
Not supporting a national nurse registry and instead letting the state associations and licensing boards handle it
Illustrates a need to focus on a healthy working environment to improve retention and recruitment of permanent nurses, which in turn will reduce the need for temporary and travel nurses
Better orientation of travel nurses is important because even a good nurse who does not know the system and procedures of her new hospital will have a hard time with little orientation
California’s nurse to patient ratio had little to do with the problem and in fact has brought more nurses back to work in the state

These points really make me think about travel nursing orientation, and the role it plays in the overall quality of healthcare provided by travel nurses and in the experience of the travel nurses themselves. Stay tuned for a post dedicated to it.

Refreshing nursing skills?

By Jeff on Jul 25, 2009 in Featured, Healthcare Hiring, Hospital Management, Hospital Staffing, Travel Nurses

A post and comment thread on a great blog over at the HCA West Florida Recruitment Blog brought up the point about nurses returning to the profession due to the economic recession after time away and their need to take part in “Back to Nursing” type programs to refresh their skills.

Here are some other nursing articles and resources I found on this topic:

Career Focus: Refresher Programs Help Nurses Return to Work
RN Refresher Courses at Nurse.com | Nationwide Refresher Course
Nurse Refresher.com
NurseWeek: You Can Go Home Again

One thing to keep in mind as you look to bring more permanent nurses on that are reentering the workforce, is that if it takes longer than you would like to get them going, but know that they will be worth the time investment, you may want to still look at travel or temporary nursing staff as an interim. Especially considering the quicker orientation time of a travel nurse typically. In fact a travel nurse with their wide range of backgrounds could be very useful in bringing a re-entry nurse up to speed pretty quickly.

Is this something you are seeing at your hospital as well? If so how long is it taking to get them up to speed? What are your thoughts?

How do you orient travel nurses?

By Jeff on Jul 17, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing, Nursing Staff Management, Travel Nurses

One of the big concerns of nurse managers and hospital staffing managers is the length of time it takes to truly orient a new travel nurse into their hospital and unit. This is an understandable concern, if you consider you only have a temporary nurse for basically three months at your unit and if they are there, then most likely the hospital has an immediate need and getting them working as quickly as possible is crucial. The norm seems to be anywhere from a half-day to three days of orientation, whereas a permanent nurse may receive anywhere from a week to two weeks of orientation.

Because they are travel nurses coming to you through a travel nursing company you should be able to trust that the agency has qualified their skills and competency as a nurse, but there are still going to be still simple things like where are your supplies, where is the cafeteria, how is the floor organized, etc. that need ingrained quickly.

Obviously the orientation of a nurse is something that needs a delicate balance of speed and thoroughness, but there are not a lot of resources out there to help you build a quick, but effective orientation plan. At least that I could find. But, maybe we can help each other.

I would love to be able to provide some simple advice for our hospital clients (hopefully that is some of you) on how to make their orientation the most effective for them and for our travelers and I think you should be able to share with others hospital staffing and HR professionals the things that have worked for you. Handbooks? Quizzes? Mentors? Tour Guides? Puppet shows?

So if you have a second please share. If you want to be anonymous just send me an email at Jeff.Long@MedicalSolutions.com.

Tips for interviewing travel candidates

By Jeff on Feb 06, 2009 in Featured, Travel Nurses

When you are working with a healthcare staffing company, whether it is a travel nursing company or travel allied health company, it is important to place the proper emphasis on interviewing the travel nursing or therapist candidate. Filling your nursing or unit needs is far too important to start it off with out a great interview process.

For starters the speed in which you get the interview done is very important. The best travel nurses or therapists are always in demand, especially right now when there are not as many jobs for them to choose from and an abundance of candidates for a smaller number of jobs. Remember they still have many companies talking to them and you want to make sure the best candidates do not get away from you and compromise your ability to deliver quality patient care.

Once you have reviewed the resume and decided to interview the travel nurse, therapist, or tech here are some tips to help it go smoother:

Have a clear understanding of what you are looking for, list the skills, personality and moral traits you want in a candidate.

Have a list of questions ready, Use the same one on every interview and develop it as you go.

Take the time to build a good relationship with the travel nurse, therapist, or tech candidate so they feel more comfortable and are able to demonstrate their true qualifications.

Ask open ended and situational questions. Avoid yes/no questions to really see want the travel candidate knows and what they are really like and how they will react in situations they will be faced with.

See if the nurse or allied health candidate has any questions of their own, it is a good sign when they do as it shows someone who has done prior research and was paying attention during the interview.

A succesful interview really comes down to preparation, so do your homework and take the time to get the interview done right the first time. It will save you time and money in the long run if the travel nurse or allied health professionals is not a good fit.

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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