All healthcare facilities must face the task of maintaining quality healthcare during peak seasons. Patient care has ebbs and flows, so keeping an optimal healthcare staff is challenging. However, you can ensure seamless care by leveraging travel nurses for peak seasons.

Leveraging Temporary Travel Nurses

Proper staffing levels directly influence patient outcomes and satisfaction rates. Staffing levels are particularly crucial during peak seasons. Travel nurses are a flexible solution to ensure continuity of quality patient care during peak seasons. Travel nurses provide scalability, allowing healthcare facilities to adjust their workforce to real-time needs.

Travel nurses bring diverse perspectives and varied experiences. They have specialized skills in high-demand areas such as critical care, emergency, and operating rooms. Healthcare facilities immediately gain professionals with the expertise to help patients and improve outcomes. These professionals can help your permanent staff meet increasing healthcare demands while providing a seamless patient experience.

Best Integration Practices

Communicate what you expect from travel nurses regarding job duties and hospital policies. Discuss workflow and cover any unique procedures your facility might be using. Clear communication is essential between the travel nurses and other healthcare professionals. Keep everyone on the same page, and ensure the travel nurses have support.

Provide an orientation that covers your hospital’s policies and procedures and any other information specific to the role. Switch it up, use online and in-person training, and ensure the travel nurses have time for interaction and questions.

You might want to consider mentorship for the new travel nurses. A mentor can help the nurse throughout the orientation process and answer questions. A mentor can help navigate the culture and politics to help the travel nurse during peak season.

Balancing Care With Demand

High-quality care is crucial, even during peak times. Increased patient demand strains your existing staff and compromises patient care. With their diverse backgrounds and experience in different healthcare settings, travel nurses can step in and make an immediate impact. Consider the following when balancing the demand:

• Know when the volumes will increase. Use your historical patient data to understand when volumes will increase.
• Make critical areas a priority. Decide which of your departments should be a priority during peak seasons.
• Align flexible contracts with peak periods. The key is to ensure the terms of the contracts give your institution some scalability in the event of sudden volume increases.
• Plan a department-specific orientation. Focus on the specific department that the travel nurse will support.

Do not wait too long! Start lining up travel nurses early before peak season to ensure you get the best nurses to help you maintain quality.

Planning for Peak Season

You must know your current and projected staffing needs to ensure seamless care during peak seasons. To do this, you need to be aware of the volume of patients, your budget, staff availability, and the expectations of your facility. Tools such as historical data, forecasting, benchmarking, and surveys can help you estimate your staffing needs.

Talk with your full-time staff before partnering with travel nurses. They are on the frontline and can be an excellent source of information regarding anticipated needs. You can develop a plan to support these needs. Know where possible gaps might arise.

Monitor current health information. Doing so is essential for predicting healthcare needs. Global tracking for influenza, viruses, and outbreaks can be helpful predictors of the need for short-term staff.

Are You Looking To Hire Travel Nurses?

If you need to leverage travel nurses for peak season, consider partnering with ADN Healthcare. Professional recruiters at ADN Healthcare can streamline your talent search with a custom staffing solution.