Adequate staffing is an essential element of any successful healthcare facility. It’s the backbone that delivers patient care with the highest standards of quality, safety, and efficiency. When staffing levels fall short, patient care can suffer, healthcare workers become overburdened and are at risk of burnout and the facility’s reputation can be at stake. Therefore, ensuring adequate staffing isn’t just about keeping operations running smoothly; it’s about fulfilling the facility’s duty to provide optimal care to its patients and creating an environment where healthcare workers can thrive. Adequate staffing is crucial for achieving improved patient care and satisfaction, as well as stable and efficiently-run healthcare facilities. Although maintaining appropriate staffing levels can be challenging, partnering with a healthcare staffing agency can make all the difference in addressing staffing needs quickly and effectively. With 40% of nursing units in the United States understaffed, this problem is one that is universal across the healthcare industry. Take a look at some of the reasons to maintain proper staffing, the pitfalls of inadequate staffing, and the benefits of partnering with a reputable staffing agency.
Why Adequate Staffing Matters
When a healthcare facility struggles to get by with inadequate staff, the results are detrimental for patients and staff members alike. In fact, a low patient-to-staff ratio increases patients’ risk of death within a hospital setting. In addition, patients are more likely to experience a wide range of negative outcomes, including:
- Respiratory failure
- Falls, including falls with injury
- Hospital-acquired pneumonia
- Failure to rescue
- Cardiac arrest
- Increased rate of infection
Hospital workers, especially nurses, also suffer when they’re employed in a facility with inadequate staffing. When there are too many patients to care for, nurses are not able to spend the needed time with each patient.
Insufficient staffing takes a toll on healthcare workers who show up to care for patients every day. More than half of nurses point to a workload that is too much to carry. Overworked nurses can inadvertently put their patients at risk because they themselves are plagued with a long list of symptoms associated with burnout, including:
- Insomnia
- Depression
- Fatigue
- High blood pressure
Most healthcare workers entered their careers out of a desire to help people. However, they become more likely to leave healthcare altogether when they hit burnout due to inadequate staff support. As many as 45% of nurses report an intention to change careers as a result of being overworked. That burnout is costly to healthcare providers.
Benefits of Adequate Healthcare Staffing
Adequate healthcare staffing, on the other hand, results in positive outcomes across the board, for patients, healthcare workers, and healthcare facilities alike. When California instituted a statewide requirement regarding nurse-to-patient ratios, the improved numbers were striking, including fewer surgery-related deaths and less time spent in the ICU. Adequate healthcare staffing results in:
- Improved patient safety
- Decreased risk of medical errors
- Shorter hospital stays
- Increased patient satisfaction
- Decreased healthcare worker turnover
- Reduced costs in recruitment and training
- Improved healthcare worker job satisfaction
- Reduced patient care costs
- Reduced healthcare worker burnout
- Better patient outcomes
- Reduced mortality rates
- Decreased rates of hospital-acquired infections
- Reduced medical malpractice claims
- Decreased falls and patient injuries
The combination of overall improved patient outcomes with the promise of cost savings makes adequate staffing a top priority for any healthcare facility. Overworked facilities can find a solution to achieve their staffing goals by teaming up with a healthcare staffing agency that can fast-forward and simplify their hiring process.
The Benefits of Working With a Healthcare Staffing Agency
By partnering with a healthcare staffing agency, you can effectively address any issues related to understaffing in your healthcare facility. A specialized staffing agency that comprehends your requirements can provide you with candidates who are well-prepared to deliver excellent patient care right from their first day on the job. Working with a healthcare staffing agency helps you do the following:
Widen Your Recruiting Network
Because a healthcare staffing agency has a wide network, you can reach candidates who might not otherwise ever learn of your facility’s needs. In an industry with widespread staffing shortages, this access to experienced professionals can make all the difference in staying fully staffed.
Lift the Burden on Your HR Department
Hiring healthcare professionals can be a time-consuming process. When a staffing agency such as Marquee Healthcare Staffing steps in to handle credentialing, your internal hiring process is seamless.
Speed Up the Hiring Process
Recruiting and interviewing healthcare professionals can also be a lengthy process. Staffing agencies help speed this up because they already have a database of candidates for you to draw from and they are well-positioned to recruit even more.
Fill Temporary Positions
A healthcare agency has access to healthcare workers from direct placements, to contract or contract to hire to help you staff open positions as quickly as you requested. Marquee Healthcare Staffing can tap into a network of healthcare professionals, we can adapt to your needs to provide temporary or part-time professionals when you have unexpected staff shortages.
Marquee Healthcare Staffing: The Expertise You Need
Recruitment in today’s healthcare environment must go beyond placing online ads — if you want to fill your open positions with the right candidates, that is. When you turn to us at Marquee Healthcare Staffing, you access our years of expertise and our specialized tools. As a result, you get the right people for your needs.
With our help, you can reduce your healthcare costs, ensure legal staffing compliance, and deliver high-quality patient care you can be proud of. Whether you’re trying to fill medical or non-clinical healthcare positions, we have a vast talent pool to draw from, so you can fill full-time and part-time vacancies speedily. We help you maintain the staffing levels you need, whether you’re coping with turnover issues, lengthy leaves of absence, or overall staff shortages.
At Marquee Healthcare Staffing, we understand the importance of having the right team in place to meet your organization’s needs. That’s why we provide specialized hiring services to streamline the staffing process for you. Our team handles all screening and interviewing, so you can step in at the end of the process to choose from the most qualified candidates. We also take the burden of recruiting and sourcing candidates off your plate, freeing up your time and resources to focus on other critical tasks. Contact us today to see how we can tailor our solutions to meet your unique staffing needs and help your organization thrive.
