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Our new website!

By admin on Jun 16, 2011 in Medical Solutions Staffing News

As you can tell we have a new website, logo and color scheme.

Our website has always been more focused on our travelers and that has not really changed. But for you, hospitals and healthcare facilities that work with Medical Solutions, it is just another progression in our efforts to bring you the best travel nurses available.

website Our new website!

We launched some new features on it that we hope will attract even more high quality nurses to us so we can help you keep on delivering great patient care. The new features include:

It is the travel nursing industry’s first mobile web site so travelers can access it and search for jobs anywhere
An area where travel nurses can build a profile on the Medical Solutions home page
Travelers that have built a profile can login through Facebook login
A great new travel nurse job search where travelers can find your jobs
We updated our skills checklists and added the ability for travelers to save them to our database once they are done
Easy to use slide-out menue to shortcuts and a quick job search
A “meet our team” page so you and our travelers can see the faces behind Medical Solutions
A quick sign up on each page of the site to receive the Medical Solutions newsletter

We partnered with Staffing Robot to develop the site and they did an amazing job. They alsoworked with us to design our new logo and color scheme. We feel that they are more indictive of what Medical Solutions is all about than our old logo and colors were.

If you want to read more, here is a link to our press release about the travel nursing industrworld’s first fully mobile website

Nurses Week Contest – Give it a Shot! Nurses Week T-Shirt Design Challenge

By Jeff on Apr 28, 2010 in Healthcare Staffing, Medical Solutions Staffing News

Just wanted to take second and mention our Nurses Week contest called the “Give it a Shot! Nurses Week T-Shirt Design Challenge”. It is a month long celebration of Nurses Week that lets nurses or fans of nurses design t-shirts (using a really easy tool) that celebrate nurses and all they do. And win prizes at the same time.

Anyone is eligible to compete (except our internal Medical Solutions employees), so if your unit has some frustrated fashion designers, clever wordsmiths or nurses who just want to express what nursing is all about to them, send them this link. Give it a Shot! Nurses Week T-Shirt Design Challenge.

Or why not have your own contest and submit that idea to our contest.

If you don’t want to get that involved, don’t forget you can also just vote on your favorites. And there are a lot to choose from with 86 designs submitted already. And there are still two weeks to go.

We would love it if one of our travelers or a nurse at one of our client hosptials were the winner. So start today and have your hopsital vote.

Can travel healthcare staff actually save you money?

By Jeff on Apr 17, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing

Last week Jason Lander over at Staffing Robot posted about the “Top 10 reasons to use temporary healthcare professionals.” The list was very thorough, though I did comment that I would add improved patient care and safety to the list. What struck me was the timing of the post. We had just published a white paper and staffing calculator for our client hospitals that addressed many of these same issues, especially the morale of the perm nursing staff and and the hidden cost savings that occur when units are properly staffed.

It looks like there is still a lot of education that still needs done on the value of supplemental staff for hospitals. Although the focus of the white paper was on nursing, many of the same principles apply to allied health professionals like PT/OT, Imaging and Lab techs and therapists. Here is a link to download our nursing staff value calculator and white paper if you are interested.

The 9 hidden values of travel nurses

By Patrick Fuerstenau on Oct 07, 2008 in Featured

I’m sure you are aware of the areas that using travel nurse staff can benefit your hospital from a financial aspect: Workers’ Compensation, Vacations and Sick Days, Accounting Costs and Wages, Training Time, Payroll Taxes, Pension Costs, Termination Expenses & Unemployment.

But are you aware of the hidden values of using travel nurses?

1. For starters the additional help can take a big stress of your permanent nursing staff. The less stress and more satisfied with their jobs your perm nurses feel the better your hospital will run and the better patient care you will be able to provide.
2. Another benefit that travel nurses bring to your healthcare facility is a fresh perspective and a wide variety of different experiences that can breathe new life into a nursing unit.
3. Research has also shown that better patient outcomes are related to higher percentages of temporary nursing staff. In fact compared to perm nursing staff the research showed that temp nurses are just as experienced and even more likely to hold a BSN or higher.
4. Travel nurses can also free up your permanent nursing staff to attend training sessions or important meetings.
5. Travel nurses are an invaluable resource for providing feedback for your hospital or unit. They have seen how a lot of similar units operates and can give you real insight into areas where your healthcare facility could improve. They may even be helpful in implementing new forms and protocols that they have used at other facilities (with permission of course).
6. The nature of the travel nursing industry lends itself to discussions about which healthcare facilities they prefer to work at. So travel nurses can also let you know the areas that your facility excels in because sometimes we can be our own worst critics, especially without a frame of reference to compare against.
7. Travel nurses can also be a valuable resource as you grow your hospital and expand the scope and responsibilities of your units. Either through freeing up the perm staff for additional training or contributing their knowledge and ideas from other healthcare facilities.
8. Travel nurses can also set a great example of flexibility and eagerness to learn new competencies to your existing nursing staff.
9. They can also add a level of diversity and cultural awareness that your permanent nursing staff may not be able to add because as a travel nurse they are exposed to a number of different parts of the country and types of healthcare facilities.

So when you are making the decision about using travel nurses at your healthcare facility don’t forget to look past the bottom line and see the hidden value of travel nurses and the positive impact they can have on your hospital and staff.

Nurse Retention and the Nursing Shortage

By Patrick Fuerstenau on Oct 07, 2008 in Nursing Shortage

There’s no surprise in the reality that the United States is in the middle of a nursing crisis. According to some statistics, currently there is an estimated shortage of 150,000 nurses in the U.S. alone. Over the next ten years or so, there will be a need for over 650,000 new nursing jobs, while at the same time 450,000 nurses will have left the profession. Most predict that the shortage will equal to a need of approximately 800,000 nurses!

There are however a number of nurses (Aprrox. 300,000+), most of whom fall under the “baby boomer” demographic that are no longer working and could help buffer the shortage. Many of the reasons for leaving are a result of the shortage. When hospitals make certain cutbacks it has a ripple effect that is felt from the top down. If hospitals can figure out a way to retain these nurses by offering different incentives such as, lighter workloads, bonuses and so forth. There may be a chance to keep “veteran” nurses around a lot longer to help teach and groom new nurses just entering the profession.

The nursing profession is still very appealing, it’s just there isn’t enough faculty or class space to accommodate the numbers. Some states are taking the initiative and offering grants for nursing-school expansions to help with the increasing numbers being turned away. These new initiatives are in their infancy and it is still debatable whether this will have a positive affect. Besides the issues with education, a bigger and more severe problem is contributing to the nursing shortage.

To compensate for certain staffing shortages, hospitals have made major budget cuts which in turn makes them make adjustments in patient care. Never is this good thing. Often times nurses are told to keep the amount of time with patients to a minimum, which leads to the obvious, poor patient care. There are nursing organizations trying to implement laws in which the ratio of nurse to patient are increased to ensure there are enough nurses to provide the quality care patients expect.
These are just a couple important factors to this ever growing nursing shortage and without governments and educational institutions taking action, things will only get worse.

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.