Falling short? 5 creative cure-alls to healthcare staffing shortages 

Are life-threatening errors becoming commonplace?

Have star employees succumb to cases of turnover-spiking burnout? Whether your staff is begging and pleading for support, or you’ve taken notice of a patient complaint epidemic, consider these to be symptoms of all-consuming staffing shortages.

Shortages of healthcare professionals can exert undue stress on medical staff members, who must work longer and harder to meet hospital needs. With logged overtime spreading like an infection, healthcare workers can become exhausted and leave the healthcare profession altogether, aggravating existing shortages of healthcare workers.

The prognosis? A decline in patient care, lower morale, and a skyrocketing risk of medical malpractice.

Ending this cycle is vital for hospitals and medical centres on the fritz. That said, read on for five creative cures to gaping healthcare shortages.

Five cures for healthcare staffing shortages

Healthcare staffing shortages have been a trend due to the increasing need for healthcare professionals and a multiplying aging population. With these antidotes to shortages in your scrub pocket, hospitals, medical centres, and clinics can sidestep devastating healthcare staffing shortages.

Partner with a staffing agency

A staffing agency such as Fusion Marketplace can connect your hospital, medical centre, or clinic with healthcare professionals, including travelling nurses, who can soothe the sting of healthcare staffing shortages.

Are you experiencing a shortage of ideas for curing healthcare staffing shortages? If so, start by pinpointing the cause, from location to salary, scheduling, being overworked, and more. Then, develop a treatment plan.

Ultimately, your strategies should be centred on two core values: keeping existing employees happy and recruiting new healthcare workers to fill openings when they occur.

Putting these ideas to work can show healthcare workers they are valued as employees while providing healthcare hiring managers with connections to skilled medical workers who could fill openings and heal the wounds left behind by healthcare staffing shortages.

Flexibility in scheduling

One of the reasons healthcare workers decide to leave an organization is an inability to adjust their schedule around familial obligations, physical limitations, etc. This schedule inflexibility can pose a hardship for medical workers who have children or other responsibilities outside of the workplace. Having schedules set in stone has been shown to prompt some healthcare employees to leave their profession.

That said, hospitals, medical centres, and clinics can overhaul abysmal retention rates by loosening the leash on hardworking employees.

Creating a pipeline of workers

In this day in age, the number of available job openings outnumbers the number of newly trained nurses and other healthcare professionals. With this discrepancy in mind, forming relationships with local schools, colleges, and training programs is a must for recruiting healthcare workers after they graduate. Healthcare staffing agencies can help make valuable connections with potential new healthcare employees to solve healthcare staffing shortages in your hospital or clinic.

Cross-training and continuing education

Developing your care team by helping them reach continuing education goals and train to serve in multiple roles will allow them to fill in where needed within your medical organization. Your employees will also be building their professional skills, which will help them evolve into the swiss-army-knives taking the healthcare sector by storm.

Better use of technology

Healthcare organizations have been slow to take advantage of the benefits of technology in recruitment, scheduling, and training. Better use of technology will help reach younger healthcare workers, and it should speed the orientation and onboarding process.

How to solve healthcare staffing shortages

Healthcare staffing shortages existed before the COVID-19 outbreak. With the additional challenge of fighting a pandemic, having adequate healthcare staffing in clinics, hospitals, and medical centres is more important than ever.

Implementing is two-pronged approach is the key to solving the problem of healthcare staffing shortages. Preventing employee frustration and burnout will lower the number of healthcare workers leaving your organization. Once you develop and maintain a pipeline of skilled employees, staffing shortages will become less burdensome.

Improving working conditions and scheduling for healthcare employees and helping them continue education and training as part of their professional development will result in happier employees who will be less likely to leave.

Parting shot

Having openings is inevitable, so healthcare leaders should also develop a path that makes their organization more attractive to new employees. Working with staffing agencies will help construct that pipeline and connect with the skilled medical employees needed for a miraculous recovery.