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Demystifying healthcare staffing

By Jeff on Oct 16, 2009 in Demystifying healthcare staffing, Featured, Hospital Management, Hospital Staffing

Over the next several weeks we are going to be bringing you a new series that tackles some of the common questions about temporary healthcare staffing.

On the schedule right now are the following questions:

How can hospitals make sure they are staffed appropriately in a nursing shortage?
Why should I use one company over another to meet my healthcare staffing needs?
How do healthcare staffing companies recruit healthcare professionals?
How do healthcare staffing companies screen healthcare professionals?
How quickly can healthcare staffing companies find healthcare professionals for my hospital?
What is the first step I should to take if my hospital has staffing needs?
When should my hospital consider temporary staffing?
Why would a healthcare professional want to work on a temporary basis?
Can a hospital extend a temporary assignment? Or turn it into a permanent hire?
Whose responsibility is it to provide a temporary healthcare professional with living accommodations?
Whose responsibility is it to provide for a temporary healthcare professional’s liability insurance?
What types of nurse staffing do healthcare staffing companies provide?
What special skills or competencies do healthcare staffing companies require for travel nurses?
What about Vendor Management Services (VMS)?
Do healthcare staffing companies provide staffing for ambulatory surgery centers?
Do healthcare staffing companies help recruit permanent staff too?
Do healthcare staffing companies only provide temporary staffing to hospitals?
Can healthcare staffing companies provide staffing for home health needs?
What should I look for in a healthcare staffing company?
Isn’t temporary staff expensive?

Can temporary nurse staffing help in lean hospital management?

By Jeff on Sep 18, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing

A recent article in the USA Today talked about hospital CEOs’ efforts in cutting out wasteful spending to not only increase the efficiency and profitability of their hospitals but also help lower the cost of healthcare, an obviously hot topic right now.

It discussed waste in supplies and use of staff’s time and how some hospitals are reducing inefficiencies using Toyota’s lean management system and reducing costs in patient care by 25% in one example. In fact, experts weigh in and say that if all hospitals could do save similar amounts it would save $400 billion on Medicare and another $1.3 trillion on the non-Medicare side. Those are huge savings and really what industry couldn’t probably do the same by being more efficient?

It leads me to think about the role of temporary staff in running a lean hospital. Just like you wouldn’t want supplies to go to waste (like the article mentions) and would be able to save money by having supplies on demand, you wouldn’t want to be overstaffed when your patient level doesn’t call for it and conversely understaffed when your patient numbers have increased. Having nursing staff on demand could be a huge savings and, if approached right, a huge efficiency increase.

Industry research has shown that hospitals are reluctant to use contingent staffing and will usually often only use it as a last resort. And some of the reasons listed are, training and orientation, staff cohesiveness and high costs.

Those reservations are understandable, but if you approach staffing as a lean management item it may make sense to take a second look at each area of reservation and create systems to deal with each one to take advantage of the cost savings that travel nursing staff can provide instead of seeing them as obstacles to nursing and allied health staff on demand. This could help you create a better work environment for your nurses and other healthcare professionals and in turn care for your patients better. And what a competitive advantage for your hospital that would be.

This post made me think of a few more related topics so keep an eye out. And I would love to hear your thoughts too.

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.

Is your nursing staff burning out?

By Jeff on Jun 26, 2009 in Featured, Nursing Staff Management

We continue to see a lot of interest in the topic of nurse staff burnout coming to this blog. When even one of your staff is burned out it can cause such an emotional drain on you as a healthcare leader, your staff and your family.

We wanted to see what we can do to help the first thing we did was put together a quick poll to see how your hospital staff is doing? Let us know.

Build your best nursing unit

By Jeff on Jun 03, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing, Nursing Staff Management

Right now having a full and consistent nursing staff has probably never been easier, thanks to the current economic drivers masking over the nursing shortage you are probably seeing the benefit being nurses that are more than willing to pick up an extra shift, great older nurses are hanging around a little longer and your internal float pool is overflowing. The challenge now is to manage that situation and take full advantage of the opportunities it gives you and your hospital to address some areas that normally cause nurse turnover and burnout. Some things you can do to fully utilize this time are:

Improve your nurse retention efforts
Develop future nursing leaders
Evaluate unit processes and build teamwork among nurses
Improve as a nursing leader
Put more recognition efforts in place
Improve the participation of the nurses in your units in the decision-making process
Find ways to establish professional growth opportunities
None of these initiatives have to cost a lot of money if they are done with some imagination. Here are some resources for each area:

Improve your nurse retention efforts
Use mentors to improve nurse retention
Improve Your Nurse Retention With The LifeWings Program
Improving Nurse Retention in Jordanian Public Hospitals: Discussion

Develop future nursing leaders
Attributes and Competencies Needed by Future Nurse Leaders and Managers*
Transformational Nursing Leadership
Developing Future Nursing Leaders for Today’s Nurse Leader: What are my responsibilities?

Evaluate unit processes and Build teamwork among nurses
Building Blocks of Teamwork
Effective strategies can reduce turnover rates, improve group cohesion and nurse satisfaction �
Quality work environments for nurse and patient safety
Building a Collaborative Nursing Practice to Promote Patient Education: An Inpatient and Outpatient Partnership

Improve yourself as a nursing leader
Nursing leadership
Leadership and nursing care management
What leadership styles should senior nurses develop?

Put more recognition efforts in place
Ways to Reward Employees (Without Spending a Dime)
10 No-Cost Ways to Recognize Employees
Five Tips for Effective Employee Recognition: How to Reward, Recognize, Award, and Thank People Successfully

Improve the participation of the nurses in your units in the decision-making process
Nurses Transform Unwieldy Decision-Making, Go Back to Bedside
Barriers to effective clinical decision making in nursing
Evidenced Based Nursing

Find ways to establish professional growth opportunities
National Nursing Staff Development Organization�
NurseLearn
Staff development nursing secrets

How does your hospital grade?

By Jeff on May 15, 2009 in Featured, Healthcare Hiring, Hospital Staffing

Have you ever wondered what the nurses and allied health professionals working for you thought of your unit, management style or hospital. Thanks to a new website called NurseRatings.org you may be able to find out. The site is very new and as of yet I have not seen any ratings take place, but I think that it is only a matter of time before traffic picks up for it (I have seen a fairly aggressive advertising campaign for it using Google). When it does, you will have two choices ignore what people say about your hospital or see it as a chance to make some real improvements.

Currently the site lets users rank anonymously on the following areas:

Doctor to Nurse Relationship

Nurse to Nurse Relationship

Pay

Location

Nurse Management

Professional Development

There are a couple of sites that are for patient ratings like, HealthGrades.com and Medicare.gov – Hospital Compare, but this site is a different approach to improving your patient care from the ground up. If all the areas are above are taken care of then there should inherently be good patient care going on at your hospital. I would be surprised if a hospital rated well on NurseRatings.org, but poorly on HealthGrades.com for instance.

Also, from a recruiting the best nursing staff standpoint, this site could be very beneficial or harmful. Seeing the feedback nurses are giving your hospital and making adjustments when appropriate is a great way to improve your overall nursing and allied health recruiting efforts.

Check the site out in a couple of months, I think you will see that there are plenty of ratings on it and some very useful information for all nursing and allied health unit managers, hospital staffing managers and hospital c-level decision makers to look at.

Help your young nurses hang in there

By Jeff on Apr 24, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing, Nursing Staff Management

An article on Medical News Today discusses the recent healthcare summit at the White House that discussed the nursing shortage and the threat it poses on patient care in the United States. In the article they highlight a study by Dr. Peter Buerhaus that found that 80% of nurses believe the nursing shortage affects their ability to deliver quality care.

The University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), an alliance of 103 academic medical centers and 210 of their affiliated hospitals, is asking hospitals to focus on nursing staff retention, especially during the economic downturn in support of Obama’s administration’s call to action.

The article discussed the UHC’s call for a greater emphasis on retaining new nurse graduates and highlighted their work with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) to create the UHC/AACN Nurse Residency Program. The one-year program provides a curriculum and support aimed at new graduate nurses by giving them the tools they need to survive the intense pressure that comes with being a nurse in a hospital. So far the program has had great results in improving nurse retention. One hospital system that has implemented the program saw its turnover rate for new nurses go from 34% to 7% after just two years.

I don’t know the numbers for other industries, but the number of young nurses leaving the profession seems very high. I have not run across the same thing for allied health specialties like physical therapists, occupational therapists or imaging techs. Is this because of a disconnect between what the student nurse is promised versus the reality, is the atmosphere too intimidating, are they not practicing in the specialty they wanted, are the older nurses hostile to the new nurses? From what I read these are all a big part of it, but with the nursing shortage so high it is important to address these issues as early as possible regradless of which one is the biggest contributor.

One way is implementing the UHC’s program at your hospital or creating your own similar program. Have you?

Another is to give your new nurses the tools they need. If your new nurses are dealing with this, RealityRN is a great website for them to check out. They can let off steam and talk to other nurses who have dealt with first year burn out in their nursing careers and get advice.

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.

Hospitals aim to please patients

By Patrick Fuerstenau on Oct 07, 2008 in Healthcare Staffing Tweets

Short but sweet post. Here’s an article I discovered in my local newspaper here in Omaha, Nebraska.

It’s nice to know that hospitals are constantly trying to keep up with patient comments and requests relating to their past experiences. This gives the facilities a better idea of what is expected of them from a patient point of view. I have a little experience in the field of customer satisfaction. I was once a research consultant for a local survey company. My duty was to call past patients of hospitals all across the country and ask them about their stay, attitudes towards those who cared for them and so on. To my surprise, many were positive, but sprinkled in were a few horror stories. Hopefully hospitals take to heart the data that was collected and use it to their advantage.