Fail-Safe Hiring That Maintains Your Excellence in Healthcare
Employing talented staff into travel nurse jobs offers a range of valuable benefits. You’ll reduce the costs of hiring full-time employees, gain the expertise you need when you need it, and fill vacancies faster. Employing travel nurses also allows you to more easily adapt to demand for your healthcare services.
When you get your travel nurse strategy right, you won’t sacrifice the quality of your service – you’ll benefit from nursing experience that will help you maintain the quality service provision for which you are renowned.
Here are five ingredients of success for your travel nurse jobs.
1. Be Clear about Your Expectations
If the travel nurse doesn’t understand your expectations for the relationship, the relationship can quickly degenerate.
It’s important not to rush to find the right travel nurse and set their expectations for the role – the length of assignment, potential for extension, hours and working patterns, responsibilities of the role, etc.
To find the best match to your role and organization, partnering with Loyal Source gives you access to an incredible bank of highly experienced travel nurses – meaning you get the best person for the job when you need the cover.
2. Put It in a Written Contract
A written contract is critical, and it should include all the details that both you and the travel nurse need to understand. Describe the job in full, and detail pay and conditions. The contract is the legal document that forms the basis of your working relationship. It doesn’t need to be exhaustive, but it should be comprehensive.
3. Pay Attention to Qualifications and Experience
Make sure that you know what qualifications and experience will be needed to perform the travel nurse role. It’s important to ensure that you don’t ask for a shopping list of desired qualifications – by doing so you will only succeed in ruling out otherwise exceptional candidates. Focus on what is necessary. This will help potential candidates make a realistic assessment about their suitability, and ensure you get a longer list of talent to choose from.
4. Communicate Effectively
Miscommunication is a major cause of issues between contract staff and the contracting organization. While the experience of your travel nurse should ensure they can ably take on the role, it is important to make sure that you communicate your needs and their responsibilities effectively and daily – just as you would with full-time employees. This may mean face-to-face communication and adding them to internal systems such as email.
5. Onboard Your Travel Nurse
Yes, you want your travel nurse to hit the ground running. They certainly have the qualifications and experience to do so, but they must still get off on the right foot. This is your responsibility. Your travel nurse will work more effectively if they know all the necessary information to work well – this includes reporting lines, where all the amenities are in the building, protocol for supplies, and so on.
Put Your Travel Nurses on a Sure Footing
Hiring travel nurses allows you to provide healthcare services with high-quality employees. It’s an extremely cost-effective strategy, too. You won’t be paying all the overheads associated with hiring full-time employees. These cost savings more than make up for the higher base salary that you will normally need to pay travel nurses.
When hiring travel nurses, it is essential that you establish an effective working relationship in which the travel nurse is fully aware of their responsibilities and role, and how they fit into your organization for the period of their assignment. The tactics above will get your working relationship off to a successful start, and then to maintain that success throughout.
For all your staffing needs as a healthcare provider – whether contract, contract-to-hire or full time – contact Loyal Source today.