By Megan M. Krischke, contributor
Gone are the days of pieces of paper tacked to a break room corkboard announcing open shifts; hours of stressed phone calls begging nurses to come in to fill shifts; and nurses wanting more work but unable to find an open shift that fits their schedule.
Online scheduling systems allow nurses to see all available shifts at their hospital and to make bids for shifts for which they are qualified.
Automated online staffing solutions are eliminating headaches for nurse managers and staff nurses alike. The new online systems allow nurses to see all available shifts at their hospital, or network of hospitals, and to make bids to cover shifts for which they are qualified. Available shifts can be viewed and bid upon from anywhere the nurse can access an Internet connection.
“We are helping to create an environment where nurses want to work,” said Kathy Douglas, RN, chief nursing officer at Concerro (formerly known as BidShift), a company that provides automated staffing solutions to hospitals. “While our approach is still to get the vacancy filled, instead of a command-and-control approach, our automated staffing solution is more participatory. Nurses can see the work available and decide where they want to work. What we find is that more shifts are getting filled and that nurses’ job satisfaction is improving because they have more control, autonomy and flexibility.”
Many of the hospitals that use an online staffing tool also offer incentives such as increased rates of pay or reward points for nurses taking shifts that are difficult to cover, such as those on weekends and holidays.
Ann Barrett, RN, MN, director of nursing resource management at The Miriam Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, said the hospital had been looking for a better mechanism for enabling nurses to pick up extra shifts and for a fair method of distributing those shifts.
“We wanted to increase nurses’ satisfaction—to increase the ease of picking up more hours and making more money,” Barrett said.
“Probably the best feedback I get is from the per diem nurses and the CNAs,” Barrett continued. “Often CNAs will carry a second job to make ends meet, but now that they can see all the shifts available in the hospitalnot just the ones in their unitmany of them are working extra hours at the hospital. I imagine this system is reducing the need for second jobs.”
Jen Howland, RN, BSN, a per diem nurse for The Miriam Hospital’s medical cardiology unit, loves the online bidding system.
“It has revolutionized my life,” Howland said. “Before we had the online system I was working about three shifts a month; now I work three shifts a week. It was hard before because I’d get a call in the morning to work that night and that was rarely enough time to set up child care. Now I sit down with my personal calendar in front of me and put in for the day, shift and unit I want to work. Now I can put my family first and fit nursing around it.”
In addition to the benefit of adding hours to their schedule, staff nurses are able to pick up shifts in a variety of units, allowing them a change of pace and an opportunity to try different areas of nursing.
“Before we adopted the online system, we had a ‘putting-out-fires’ type of mentality,” Barrett explained. “The nurse manager would spend hours trying to get additional shifts covered and would fill them on a first-come, first-served basis, which meant the full-timers were getting all the work because they would see shifts posted first. This also meant we were paying a lot of overtime and double overtime.”
The automated system allows hospitals to distribute shifts in ways that are fair—whether it is honoring seniority, creating an equitable distribution of hours or simply matching the best qualified nurse with an available opening. Additionally, by giving both full- and part-time nurses an equal opportunity to bid on shifts, funds spent toward overtime can be reduced.
“Because they have more control, nurses are happier, more engaged and more involved in the success of the hospital,” Douglas said. “It is logical that when you have a more satisfied workforce, they are going to give better care, and better patient care leads to a better overall reputation for the hospital.”
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