🚨 Tips for working with travel nurses 🚨 The health care staffing shortage is at an all-time high. Health care workers are burnt out and exhausted, and many times, the solutions seemingly being offered are pizza parties or pulling in travel staff to help. Which would you pick? 🍕🧳 Travel nurses and other health care specialists are stepping in to fill gaps for overworked staff, ensuring patients still receive the care they need during these tough times. It's important to remember that these travelers are not at fault for pay disparities—this is an issue for health care leaders to address on a national scale. While travelers provide much-needed support, they can also cause some conflict within units. Permanent staff may feel frustrated that travelers are paid more but may have less experience. However, it's crucial to recognize that travelers are there to give permanent staff a break and are not there to stay forever. Effective conflict resolution is key. Here are some strategies: 1. Communication: Use active listening, avoid interruptions, and use “I” statements to foster value in conversations. 2. Identifying Solutions: Focus on factual data and agree on alternatives that benefit both parties. 3. Be Kind: Invite new travel staff to lunch, get to know them, and promote unity within the unit. Healthcare is hard. Staffing a unit is hard. But by working together and supporting each other, we can navigate these challenging times 💪❤️. For our travel nurse audience, what other tips do you suggest? Drop your insights into the comments 👇🏾 #AORN #Nurses #TravelNurses #Nurselife #PerioperativeNurses #Orlife #Nursing #Nurse #OrNurse #Periop #PeriopNurse
More education on what a traveler nurse pay really is: 1. Sometimes they do not get benefits 2. They are encouraged to not ask for additional days off (other than what was agreed to before assignment started) 3. Agencies can take up to 50% of the rate organizations pay…the nurse does not make what you see on the payroll 4. They cancelled plans with family and friends to start at your organization within 2-3 weeks 5. They left family and friends many miles away to help your organization in a time of need 6. They work they get paid. They don’t work, they don’t get paid. Those breaks in between assignments are unpaid time… they do not have the 4+weeks of PTO to use to cover expenses.
I believe the solution is 2 fold. For the short term, hospitals & surgical centers need to provide traveling nurses with updated, thorough outlines, utilizing a dynamic digital platform, which details exactly what is expected, so that on boarding and execution can be enhanced, expedited shared and scaled. Borrowing from the world of Live Classical music, ie. a Symphony Orchestra: A first chair violinist can step in and play with an orchestra that they have never played with before, because they are given precise instructions and they know exactly what is expected of them.( detailed sheet music from the conductor that is shared w/ every seated musician) In the long-term, if nurses, scrub tech and support staff in the OR are all given a thorough, detailed, digital roadmap of every aspect of any procedure, surgeons will find procedures go smoother, so there will be less STRESS in the OR due to the shared definition of roles, faster procedudures, better outcomes, shared job satisfaction AND LESS Turnover. See eXeX.ai Or DM Me to see for yourself. https://bit.ly/3ClunwS #surgery #ordirector #directorofsurgery #surgeon #nurse #scrubtech #hospital #asc #ai #spatialcomputing
Love this but the people in charge don’t always follow this advice and lose awesome Periop nurses
I’ve have worked with some great travel nurses and they are a Godsend!! They are competent and knowledgeable! I don’t care how much they make. I know they don’t get benefits.
Interesting
It's important that people know the reality
Very informative
Berguna
Staff RN - OR at Memorial University Medical Center
1wI did travel nursing for a year to be closer to my dad who was at end of life. The jobs I chose were those that would get me close to him, not the ones that paid best. Nevertheless, as I was leaving church one day, a stranger informed me that as a traveler I was getting paid the big bucks. I clarified that the money I earned covered local housing as well as my housing costs back home, wear and tear on my car, travel expenses, and the money I was sending home to provide services to my family that I wasn’t there to provide. I started a few jobs with only one or two days of orientation and that was hard. Despite my years of experience, my lack of local training made me look incompetent. Now that I’m back home, I’m careful not to judge travel nurses. It’s a hard job.