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Be a great charge nurse
By Jeff on Oct 08, 2010 in Hospital Staffing
Here are 3 key things to remember to be a great charge nurse. http://ht.ly/2N0UP
Tag: "nurse manager"
Makeover your unit by integrating 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.
What can you learn about the patient experience from dolls?
A lot apparently.
In an article about the patient experience from HealthLeaders Media, Gar Crispell, general manager for American Girl, talked about the ways that the American Girl Doll Hospital works to provide a great patient experience for the dolls that visit it and their owners. One thing that the article mentions is their consistency and how they strive to delight with each interaction. If you want to see what that kind of patient experience brings just go to YouTube and look at all the “American Girl Doll back from the hospital videos” are out there. These are little girls who love their dolls and take the time to film and upload a video about it when they get them back.
Here is a video of a little girl as she gets one of her dolls back from the hospital. Imagine if your patients and their family’s got that excited about their stay with you.
And here is a blog post from the mom of a little girl whose doll visited the American Girl Doll Hospital, read it and the comments and you will see what their focus on patient experience can do.
The people at the American Girl Doll Hospital are able to do this without knowing a lot about their patients. But as nurses and nurse managers who have the ability to talk to and learn about your patients your job should be much easier. Great patient experience only comes from one place. The hospital staff and most often those on the front line of providing that experience are nurses. And the happier the nurses the better the patient experience. So as a nurse manager what are you doing to help make your nurses happy and teach them to pass that on to your hospital’s patients?
Nursing management and the economy
I just wanted to quickly point you to a good post at The Leaders’ Lounge about strategies to help your maximize your staff during this tough economy. But really this is good advice all the time.
The author Bonnie Clair, MSN, RN lays out some simple steps like how to assess your talent, improve employee engagement, listen to your staff’s ideas and suggestions, build closer relationships with your customers, improve your department’s culture, build trust among your staff and retain your superstars. Give it a read.
What have you been doing to help your nursing staff perform better during this tough time? Anything else you would add?
Improve your nursing staff morale
As you know, a simple thank you can actually raise the morale among your nurses and help keep their energy and enthusiasm up through their shift.
Unfortunately, it is easy to forget such fundamental practices when your lives and schedule as nursing and staffing managers are so busy. But simple acts of kindness and and appreciation, like a thank you note after a rough day, can protect your nurses from contracting a “staff infection,” which often times can result in stress, conflict, low morale and turnover.
That’s why we put together a fun little handout with some simple tips to help you help your nursing staff. Check it out, you can download the 7 Steps to Better Nursing Morale ebook here.
Work life balance for nurse managers
By Jeff on Jun 05, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Management, Hospital Staffing, Nursing Staff Management
We have seen a lot of interest in nursing staff burnout lately, both through searches that find this blog and our other blog (TravelNursingBlogs.com), but also in the media and healthcare blogosphere in general, and in nursing forums and social networks. It is obvious that the economy and change in working conditions for nurses is taking its toll and nurses may be nearing the tipping point, when their physical and emotional health concerns outweigh their financial concerns. Let’s face it, people can only work 50-60 hours a week for so long.
But this post is about you the nurse manager. How many hours are you working? Are you sacrificing your work life balance at the expense of your emotional and physical well being? If you are, stop. You may be hurting patient care just as much as your burned out staff.
How? As a their manager, your nurses take their behavioral cues from you, so if you are stressed and burned out, that is going to impact them and the patient care they give. It is pretty simple:
Happy Manager + Happy Staff = Happy Patient
And we all know that happy patients come back to your hospital and recommend you to their family and friends, increasing hospital revenue and making your hospital CFO and CMO happy. Plus when hospital revenue is up, so many other good things happen, new programs that help patients can be implemented, additional staff can be brought on to improve nurse to patient ratios and so many other side benefits that come with being a financially sound hospital.
So the real question is how do you achieve that work life balance as a nurse manager with so many people relying on you, your spouse, your kids, your parents, your employees? That is where you have to get creative. And where this series should help, over the next couple of posts I will be bringing you a series of articles to help you find work/life balance as a nursing manager. Stay tuned.
Can travel healthcare staff actually save you money?
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.
Nurse Burnout is it preventable?
I’ve been reading a lot about nurse burnout lately. There is a ton of information on the web about it, from the signs associated with it, ways to cope with it, its impact on patients and its financial implications.
For a nurse manager there are some practical measures you can take to help reduce nurse burnout in your hospital unit. Key to this is being able to understand where it is coming from, what causes it and recognizing the symptoms. Here are some links to some great resources to help you recognize and deal with nurse burnout in your staff:
Addressing Nurse Burnout – Changing Culture Is The Cure
Institute for Healthcare Leadership
Just remember that left unaddressed nurse burnout can eventually lead to losing a valuable member of your staff and that can have a real impact on the patient care you are able to provide.
How to evaluate a traveler's resume
When you are receiving 30-40 resumes for any open travel nursing or travel allied health position need that your hospital has it is imperative that you are able to quickly and accurately assess the talent and qualifications of the candidate. Hiring the wrong candidate or even wasting your valuable time talking to the wrong travel nurse or therapist can be a big drain on your hospitals resources. One of the best ways to do avoid this scenario is through a thorough but efficient look at the travel healthcare candidates resume. Here are some quick tips to help you do just that:
Have a plan. First look at skills, then the unit worked in, then experience.
Look for job relevance and make sure that the travel nursing or therapist candidate meets the minimum requirements for the job.
Try to picture the applicant in the nursing or allied health position and interacting with your current hospital staff.
Avoid making assumptions, if anything looks irregular on the traveler’s resume; make sure to follow up with the travel staffing company or the candidate during the interview.
Look for gaps in work history any sort of vagueness, this will help you avoid a nurse or therapists who may be hiding something.
Ignore disclosed information that may cause you to subconsciously discriminate against a candidate.
Hopefully following these quick tips will help you bring the most qualified and talented healthcare providers to your hospital.
Are you ready for a change?
In this economy and considering the current state of the nursing and healthcare staffing industry, nurses and therapists don’t need “recruiters” who are not interested in the long term benefit they can bring to a travelers career. They need a partner who can understand their career goals and help them achieve them. At Medical Solutions we have always tried to build that kind of relationship with our nurses, therapists and techs so we finally decided to go ahead and officially change the titles of our Recruiters to Career Consultants.
What does this mean for you a nurse manager looking for travelers for your hospital? It means you can be more confident in your decision to use Medical Solutions knowing that your travel nurse or therapist is fully supported by a company that is looking for more than a quick commission. This kind of relationship with our travelers means that you can expect travelers that care about their nursing career and are not just in it for the money, but truly want to provide quality patient care and become better care givers.
