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What skills or competencies do healthcare staffing companies require for travel RNs?

By Jeff on Oct 08, 2010 in Demystifying healthcare staffing, Hospital Staffing, Travel Nurses

The reputation of healthcare staffing companies with their clients hospitals is dependent on a lot of factors, but none is more important than the quality of nurses and allied health professionals they provide. Which is why most of them will go through great lengths to ensure that the travel nursing candidates they submit are not only highly qualified, but also good fits for your unit’s culture.

What is their screening processs?

One key thing to look for in a healthcare staffing company to see how committed they are to a thorough screening process is an outline of their nursing candidate screening process. You want to make sure that they are putting candidates through:

Background checks
Licensure verification
A review of appropriate skills for their clinical area
Experience Verification
Interviews to make sure they are a good fit and have the traits of a good travel nurse like being a hard worker, flexible and able to easily adapt to new environments.

Do they offer growth opportunities?

You also want to make sure that the healthcare staffing company provides opportunities for and encourages the professional growth of its nurses and allied travelers by offering things like:

Free CEUs
Specialty Certification Reimbursement
RN to BSN Tuition Assistance
And other educational opportunities

Whose job is it to provide a temporary healthcare professional with housing?

By Jeff on Jul 23, 2010 in Demystifying healthcare staffing, Healthcare Overtime, Hospital Staffing

This is something you do not have to worry about if you are considering using travelers at your hospital. Housing is something that the healthcare staffing company you are working with should definitely take care of. They usually have a housing department that handles finding their travel healthcare professionals suitable housing and furnishing it, which is part of their overall compensation and benefits package.

The housing department’s goal is to find the nurse good housing that enhances their experience, while also being close to the hospital and at an affordable rate using corporate discounts and contracts to minimize the expense to all three parties, the hospital, the traveler and the company.

If you come across a company that does not provide housing for its travelers then you may want to ask them why they don’t and what they do instead.

The traveler may opt to just receive a housing stipend instead, but even then the healthcare staffing company should try to assist them in the process.

If you come across a company that does not provide housing for its travelers then you may want to ask them why they don’t and what they do instead. And possibly look at working with another company instead, because this may be an indicator of how they will treat their employee and it is important for you and your hospital that the traveler is treated well by the company.

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.