Staffing managers recruit nurses and review staff performance within healthcare facilities. Overall, they are in charge of managing most staffing-related tasks within a facility, including scheduling shifts.
This management significantly impacts patients, healthcare professionals, and the facility.
The job is essential. However, the demands of the job can place significant stress on staffing managers. They might wonder how to deal with the challenges that come with the work, like nurse staffing shortages, gaps in scheduling, burnout within the team, and more.
Nursa connects PRN healthcare professionals with facilities in need. But how does PRN nursing work? Read on to learn more about staffing management and solutions.
What Is a Staffing Manager within a Healthcare Facility?
A healthcare staffing manager is responsible for recruiting, onboarding, and evaluating staff within a facility and scheduling healthcare professionals’ shifts. Additionally, the staffing manager ensures that all the professionals are competent for their jobs—capable of handling the situations they may encounter—and have sufficient training.
Overall, in most healthcare facilities, this job implies carefully scheduling clinicians to provide patient care each shift. Staffing managers may cover a shift when nobody else is available. Otherwise, they must spend time looking for someone with appropriate qualifications.
Healthcare staffing managers can suffer a lot of stress in their roles, especially when they can’t fill last-minute staffing gaps. If staffing managers could find a solution for these challenging gaps in scheduling, they could focus their energies on planning additional training for workers, bettering the facility, and fully recharging during their time off.
Nursing Gaps and Staffing Shortages
Nurse staffing is challenging for healthcare facilities, especially regarding nurse retention. Meanwhile, many nurses are leaving the profession, increasing stress factors for staffing managers. Some of the reasons nurses might quit their jobs and even the profession include the following:
- Nurse burnout: Burnout reduces nurses’ energy levels and makes them feel exhausted. Consequently, their work efficacy decreases, and they might feel frustrated and unmotivated, not caring for patients as they would if they were energized and engaged.
- Long working hours: Nursing professionals tend to work long shifts (8 to twelve hours—twelve being the standard and preferred shift length in acute care settings), and sometimes, they work double shifts to cover for someone within the facility. Although most nurses manage to cope with the long hours, this situation could increase errors that could prove fatal for patients. Therefore, nurses must get enough rest between shifts and shouldn’t work double shifts.
- High-pressure environments: Some facilities might ask their nurses to pick up more hours, and nurses may feel that they have to accept. Additionally, nurses may have patients they don’t feel prepared to handle or may not feel they can voice personal preferences.
Nursing is challenging, especially when staff is insufficient to cover shifts. The challenges of the profession lead to nurses leaving the profession, which, in turn, causes a staffing shortage.
Challenges of Staffing Management
Staffing management can be complicated. Some challenges staffing managers must overcome include the following:
- Burnout: As mentioned above, burnout reduces work efficacy, and this also applies to staffing managers, who might feel overwhelmed. For example, they might have to cover shifts themselves or pay an agency more than the facility can afford to cover shifts and avoid complications.
- Nurse retention: Organizations can retain their nurses by checking on their well-being. Furthermore, healthcare facilities must strive to eliminate high-pressure environments, burnout, and long working hours. This weight often falls on the shoulders of staffing managers. At the same time, they need to engage nurses and effectively communicate with them.
- Talent acquisition: Managers must ensure candidates are well-suited for the positions they fill. Therefore, the challenge for staffing management lies in selecting the correct nursing professionals for their organization in the minimum time.
- Training: For a healthcare facility to thrive, constant training should be available for healthcare professionals, including technical knowledge, teamwork, and other topics. Planning these trainings may also be one of the responsibilities of the staffing manager.
Managers can easily overcome the challenges of staffing management when they have the tools and the time to do so. Nursa connects PRN nursing professionals with management, liberating facilities from the stress of staffing shortages.
Tips for Staffing Management
Here are some tips for overcoming some of the biggest challenges of staffing management:
- Engage nurses: Overall, staff must feel a human connection with management. For example, opening communication channels for nurses might help them feel heard and valued.
- Maximize nursing efficiency: Knowing who works for the facility is crucial for maximizing efficiency. Therefore, staffing managers need to be aware of the qualifications and experience of their nurses.
- Use staffing apps to fill gaps: Healthcare staffing is made easy with tools like staffing apps that help healthcare facilities fill gaps. On the other hand, with staffing agencies, facilities typically spend more money to obtain the same results.
When healthcare managers free up time usually spent facing staffing challenges, they can invest more time and energy in other aspects of their roles. For this purpose, Nursa helps to connect nurses and nursing assistants with facilities in a simple and fast way.
Fill Healthcare Schedules Fast with PRN Shifts
Adequate nurse staffing is vital for the facility’s status, safe nurse-to-patient ratios, and, as discussed above, nurses’ wellbeing and nursing retention. With this in mind, healthcare managers might wonder, “How can I fill shifts fast?”
PRN or per diem shifts provide a significant advantage for healthcare facilities, allowing managers to fill the exact amount of shifts they need when required. When facilities post per diem shifts, they allow qualified nurses in their area to pick up these short-term jobs. PRN shifts enable staffing managers to fill healthcare shifts fast and reduce stress over schedule gaps.
What Are the Advantages of Using Staffing Apps?
Apart from taking a considerable weight off their shoulders, staffing managers might find that PRN shifts offer the following advantages:
- Flexibility: Healthcare facilities can post more PRN shifts when there is more demand or none when schedules are full.
- Less burnout: Staffing managers and other healthcare professionals will feel relief from filling shifts as needed.
- Accessibility: Staffing managers can post shifts from their mobile devices or work computers and have accessibility at all times. Nurses also have accessibility, allowing them to pick up shifts as soon as they appear.
- Efficiency: Facilities will likely find suitable candidates for their needed positions in less time. Additionally, staffing costs are significantly lower, as facilities don’t need to pay the high fees for last-minute hiring through agencies or pay employee benefits, making the process more efficient.
- Talent acquisition: With staffing apps such as Nursa, managers can know the credentials of each nurse beforehand. Furthermore, staffing managers might ask for special qualifications and see only the applicants who have them.
Nursa gives healthcare facilities plenty of flexibility. Find PRN nurses today with this staffing app.
Nursa: Connecting Healthcare Facilities and Nurses
Filling schedules with qualified clinicians and reducing the time and money spent on looking for healthcare professionals leads to increased productivity in a healthcare facility and takes a great weight off the shoulders of staffing managers. Healthcare facilities can post shifts with Nursa today to fill their staffing gaps.
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