Having a shortage of nurses in your medical company or institution can significantly affect the quality of the services you are providing. If poor quality service goes on for a while, you can be sure that people will start complaining. That will lead to you developing a not-so-great reputation, which is definitely one of the biggest “business killers”.
What You Can Do
As the owner of a medical company, you must always have a lot in your mind. Getting new people on board might become your priority, but once you get the process going, you quickly realize that it is more difficult than you thought. That’s exactly why you should think of hiring a nurse staffing agency to do the hard work for you and fill your company with competent staff.
While you are partnering up with these agencies in order to make your job a bit easier, as well as to get the best possible people on board, you still aren’t absolved of all the responsibilities. It’s true that the agencies are in charge of finding the perfect employees to work for you, but you are in charge of finding the perfect agency. If you go with a wrong one, you might end up with a lot of unqualified and unskilled staff that you definitely won’t like.
Letting that happen is not exactly the best thing for the job and it can bring you more harm than good. You want highly skilled and competent nurses working for you and you won’t get those people if you don’t hire the right staffing agency. That is your responsibility and you shouldn’t try to avoid it, or do a poor job. This decision will reflect on your whole company, so choose wisely.
How To Choose
Just like nurses have their own skillsets that should be taken into consideration in the hiring process, staffing agencies have their own talents, abilities and qualifications that you should take into account. It’s true that you are hiring these people in order to make the whole nurse hiring process easier, but that doesn’t mean that you should start working with the first agency that comes along. Let me share a few guidelines and point you towards the right direction regarding the things you should look for when it comes to these agencies.
Before we start, here’s a paper explaining why optimal nurse staffing is of utmost importance: https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.anamass.org/resource/resmgr/docs/NurseStaffingWhitePaper.pdf
Experience
You want the nurses that work for you to have experience, am I right? You don’t want them to mess up on their first week of work and you want them to be skilled enough to handle all the needs of your patients, as well as of your medical company in general. Take this same logic and apply it when hiring a staffing agency.
Experience is most often the element that separates the good from the bad. This goes for any business out there. When you partner up with people who have been in business for a while, you are significantly increasing your chances of succeeding and reaching the goal that you are striving for without making too many mistakes along the way. An experienced staffing agency will definitely be able to meet your expectations.
Knowledge Of The Industry
How would you feel about hiring a bartender recruiter to find you a couple of skilled nurses to work for you? I can only assume that you wouldn’t actually trust their choices. Why would you, anyway? Nobody can say they aren’t experts, but they definitely aren’t the type of experts that you need. Don’t assume that the work you need done can be done by just anyone.
Hiring a staffing agency that has extensive knowledge of the healthcare industry is the right way to go. You need professionals who know what it is that nurses do on a daily basis. If they don’t know that, they might find you people who won’t stick around longer than a day or two, and then you will have to go through the whole process all over again. Plus, when it takes a long time to find the right people, the nurses you already have might get overworked, which is, as you can see here, one of the main reasons why they quit their jobs.
References
If an agency has been in business for a while, there is a fair chance that they will be able to tell you and actually prove to you if their previous and current clients are satisfied with the services they provide. You should definitely ask for references and use that opportunity to check the reputation of the specific agency and make sure that they are the right people for the job. Take your time to check this and don’t rush into any decisions. Choosing wisely is your key towards getting the best nurses.