Agency Advice: Why It’s So Important To Keep Up With Compliance
By Ryann Adoum, benefits manager for LiquidAgents Healthcare What is the first thing running through your mind after you get the exciting news from your recruiter that you have been offered a travel contract? Maybe it’s how you’re going to get there or how soon they need you to start, or where you’re going to live. These are all things you’re probably thinking of as you begin to tune out your recruiter’s onboarding rant. “I am going to need a copy of your most recent TB, Mask Fit Test, Hep B, MMR, Varicella, TDaP, Flu Vaccine, BLS…” your recruiter continues as you suddenly snap back to reality. Do you really need all of these things she is listing off? You should already have most of these documents ready to go, and here’s why. Importance of compliance documents The world of travel nursing is extremely fast-paced, and the room for error is slim. Once you have been extended a job offer, you are expected to get the ball rolling on compliance as soon as possible. You will need to be compliant with your agency first, and then your future facility. If you are not organized or committed to the process, onboarding might be much more of a headache than it needs to be. Compliance can be a hassle, and it means a lot of running around on your part, but there are certainly benefits to getting it done quickly. Not only does it build a great rapport with your agency, but it also means that your start date could be pushed up by the facility. Orientations for travelers are typically held every 2 weeks, so if you are quick enough on compliance to make it at least 2 weeks ahead of schedule, you could start working sooner than expected. There are several ways you can manage your compliance documents digitally so that they are easy to access when you need them, like using an online file dropbox or signing up for free compliance managing tools. Compliance items you should always have ready Along with signing your contract and human resources paperwork, a compliance department will always ask for these industry standard items. These requirements are directly from the Joint Commission, and any agency or facility who is JCAHO certified will require these. RN License Certifications Physical TB MMR, varicella, hep B TDaP vaccine Flu vaccine Mask fit test Ensure that you always have copies at your disposal, ready to send over to your agency immediately after an offer has been extended. Remember, these are just the base requirements, and you will more than likely be subject to additional documentation and testing before becoming totally compliant. Keeping compliance items current Along with keeping copies of your compliance documents, you should also ensure that certain items do not expire. Health documents such as the TB skin test, physical, vaccines, and certifications all expire and can set your potential start date back if you need to get new ones. Titer results take a few days to come in, TB skin tests require a 48-72 hour window for results, and certification classes take time to coordinate on top of the actual class time. The last thing you want is to push back your start date further– or even worse, have your contract canceled because of non-compliance. Once you are working with an agency, your compliance manager should keep track of the expiration dates for you so that you can focus on doing what you do best- working on the hospital floor! If you ever have a question about your documents, or you need to know the expiration date of something, get in touch with your compliance manager. They are happy to help, and being proactive in the compliance process will help both of you stay on track.
Getting The Right Experience To Land Your First Travel Nurse Job
Picture this; you pick up a call from a recruiter at a staffing agency, and the conversation is going great. You are answering each of their clinical questions with confidence and the connection is perfect between the two of you. They’re asking if you have your ACLS, BLS, PALS, and you even start filling out the skills checklists with them over the phone. They can’t hide their excitement as they promise you $2,500 weekly take home at a level I trauma facility in the city, and you think you have finally made it to the big leagues. Then they ask exactly how long you have been a nurse, so you reply honestly, “Well, I just graduated with my BSN about 6 months ago, but I am ready to hit the floor running.” Just like that, the mood shifts. The recruiter shuts down and starts rushing you off the phone. “Ok, just send me your resume, I will follow up this week. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” You know something has gone terribly wrong. You think to yourself, “How could I have been so gullible? Will I ever get a high-paying travel nursing gig?” Get the right travel nurse experience When you graduate from nursing school, you are so eager to find a job and start putting those hard-earned skills to use. Not so fast. The experience you gain post-graduation can determine your future as a travel nurse. If you see a fast-paced, high paying travel nurse gig in your future, you must pave the way for that early on. Urgent care clinics, correctional care, home health and SNF/rehab facilities can all be rewarding positions, but they aren’t exactly the experience that a facility is looking for in a potential traveler. For example, if you see yourself working at a Level I trauma center and teaching facility, your externship or first job should be at a facility with those same qualifications. Use this to get your foot in the door with your recruiter, and make sure to highlight it on your resume. Travel nurses are expected to adapt quickly, and if you have not been in bedside care or worked the floor of a hospital, your resume will fall to the bottom of the barrel quickly. Direct bedside care is the most important thing that facilities want to see in your experience. Travel nurse charting Charting can be an obstacle for even the most seasoned travel nurses. If you can show that you know multiple mainstream charting programs, you will get a big leg up on your competition. Soak up this knowledge early on in your career, or take some classes on the commonly used systems. Since you will not get as detailed of an orientation as a staff nurse, you are expected to be familiar with the facility’s charting program upon arrival. Some facilities even require that you are proficient in their program before you ever receive a job offer. Lynda.com is a great resource for either learning or brushing up on specific computer charting software. Here are some of the main charting programs used in facilities today: Meditech Cerner McKesson EPIC Systems Siemens Travel nurse certifications You know we had to bring these up. They’re not always cheap–and some are a pain to obtain–but being overly certified is never a bad thing when trying to stand out amongst a crowd of like-minded applicants. As a newly graduated nurse, obtaining as many certifications as you can within your specialty is a great way to boost your knowledge and highlight your resume. Facilities look to their travel nurses to be well educated and up-to-date with the latest clinical topics. Proving you’re certified solidifies your credibility. Cleaning up your travel nurse resumé Let’s face it; you lack experience, the one thing that a resume is supposed to highlight. Or do you? Here are a few tips from Oren Lavi, the director of client advisory at LiquidAgents Healthcare that will help transform you into a marketable candidate within the travel nursing industry: Add your externships and internships. If you graduated with any type of honors, such as magna cum laude, list that under your education. Get to know your managers. Detailed references are very important, especially if they take the time to write a positive comment about your work. Your agency will use those to really sell you to their clients. List any and all special experience, specialized skills or traits that you have picked up in your nursing career. Even though you are relatively new to the field, you can still learn a lot in a short period of time on the floor. Don’t be shy about your skills! Find a travel nurse recruiter and agency that understands your needs When you’re looking for your first job, jumping on the first opportunity offered, especially if you haven’t gotten a ton of other offers, seems like the right thing to do. Wrong! Rushing into a contract just to get some extra lines on your resume is the fastest route to burnout. Compromising too much could mean you’ll end up stuck 13 weeks in a city you hate at a hospital that isn’t traveler friendly. Now that doesn’t mean to wait for your fairytale travel nurse job to come along, because you’ll be waiting forever. Realistically, most contracts will come with a bit of compromise, but you shouldn’t have to give up everything just to make a travel job work. This is where your recruiter and agency should come to the rescue. What you don’t want is a recruiter or agency who are pushing you to take jobs at facilities or locations you don’t want just to fill a quota. A good recruiter who knows the market should be able to find you a position that fits most, if not all, of your criteria and will work with you to make your first experience a great one–and a good agency should provide multiple opportunities in the market for that recruiter to choose
Travel Nurse Agency: 3 Signs It’s Time to Find A New One
When you started traveling, you may have had a great relationship with the people at your travel nurse agency. But like all relationships, things can change. The people you enjoy working with move on. Shifting business goals can mean that focuses switch, and things just aren’t what they used to be. Whatever the reason, that relationship that you once had is different now. It’s just not working for you, and you’re thinking about making a switch. Before you make any agency change, you may want to consider switching recruiters, especially if you’re with an agency that generally has a good reputation. But if you’re seeing any of these signs, a recruiter change may not be enough. It could be time to break up with your agency. Your travel nurse agency’s response time is more than 24 hours. How quickly does your agency respond to issues? What about submittals? How quickly can they find answers for you? If you contact your agency and someone there doesn’t respond to you on the same day–extenuating circumstances excluded–then they are taking too long. Keep in mind that you have the power to create urgency. If you call and leave a message that tells your recruiter your question isn’t critical and that they can get back to you at their convenience, then that “same day” timing may slip some. But no agency should leave you hanging, and if yours does then it’s time to find a new one. The recruiters aren’t nurse-centered. Who is your recruiter most concerned about, you or the agency? If your recruiter continually pushes you toward jobs that you don’t want in locations you have no interest on shifts that don’t match your needs, then they likely aren’t worried as much about you being happy as they are about lining their agency’s pockets. The control over what job you take should always be in your hands. Your recruiter should be listening to what you want and tailoring a plan around that. He should know your goals and help you meet them. You feel like you aren’t getting the whole story. Transparency is the hallmark of a good agency/traveler relationship, and if you feel at all like your travel nurse agency is keeping things from you then it’s time to start shopping for a new one. How do you know if you aren’t getting the whole story? Look for indirect answers to direct questions. That’s usually a good sign. If they hem and haw when you ask about pay for a potential contract, they aren’t being transparent. Same is true about jobs. Sometimes, jobs just aren’t available that meet your criteria. A good recruiter and a good agency are going to tell you that.
Location & Legislation: Factors Impacting The Traveler Job Market (Part 1)
The term “hot market” isn’t just a corporate buzzword; it’s a battle cry for travel nurses and travel staffing agencies across the country. Nurses want to know where the jobs are and recruiters watch the market like hawks, hoping to place their nurses in the right place at the right time. For Oren Lavi, director of client advisory at LiquidAgents Healthcare, regularly updating the recruiting team is how the agency makes sure its nurses stay on top of a fast-changing travel nurse job market. “‘What’s going on in this territory?’ ‘Do you see any changes in this state?’ ‘What hospitals made acquisitions?’,” Lavi said. “They want to know all the details because they want to inform their nurses so that when they’re making their next step, it’s a logical step.” Smart travel nurses should be asking similar questions of their recruiters because there are many factors that can affect which markets are hot and when. Flying south for the winter Just like birds seek balmy temperatures during harsh winters, travelers and their patients tend to do the same. “There’s a definite seasonality to market shifts,” Lavi said. “You have Florida, Arizona and New Mexico where people from up north spend time in the south. If they get sick, it’s not at home but down in these states instead, so these hospitals see a boom in patient loads and need nurses to take care of them.” The problem is nurses want to go where it’s warm too, so while demand for them is high, so is the supply. That pushes pay down. So, while it may be more comfortable spending winters at a Florida beach, travelers who brave the cold can make great money in northern states like Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan. Hospitals in these states will often incentivize travelers to fill positions by paying more during colder months. Even with seasonal shifts, there are some states that stay “hot” year-round, like Texas and California, Lavi said. “With Texas being so big and the temperature so moderate, it will always have demand,” Lavi said. Affordable Care Act boom Lavi says there’s been no bigger boon to the market than the Affordable Care Act, specifically in 2015, the year after the tax mandate kicked in that required all U.S. citizens to buy health insurance or incur a penalty. The mandate, along with new access to tax credits for small businesses and federal subsidies for health coverage, caused a sizeable surge in insured Americans. “Everyone getting health insurance meant more people were actually going to see a physician when they needed to, which made demand even stronger,” Lavi said. “Patients benefited from getting the care they needed, hospitals benefited because they served more patients and travelers benefited because there was more opportunity out there.” Lavi expected the job market to drop at the start of this year after President Donald Trump signed the GOP’s tax reform bill into law in December of last year, which also repealed the health care coverage mandate. But so far demand has not dropped in 2018, Lavi said. “The territories I’m working right now are super hot,” Lavi said. “Travelers want to go there and we have more than enough positions for them. But if something like the Affordable Care Act (mandate) gets re-enacted, that could spur another market jump.” The nursing strike “vacuum effect” Hospital strikes are a fairly regular occurrence across the U.S. Nurses who feel they are overworked, underpaid or mistreated by management organize strikes to force hospitals into negotiations, leaving these facilities without necessary staff to take care of patients. It happens often enough that some staffing agencies specialize in placing nurses in strike areas. Hospitals will also offer significantly higher bill rates to quickly fill staff spots during a strike. While not all agencies necessarily fill strike positions, recruiters do still keep track of strikes because of the “vacuum effect” they can have on the market, Lavi said. “The strikes in Minnesota last year sucked up a lot of travel nurses…the number was in the thousands,” Lavi said. “That left a lot of other hospitals with unfulfilled needs. It was good for nurses who don’t want to work strikes because that meant less competition to get a job.” In Part Two, Oren talks about how the looming nursing shortage, hospital mergers and traveler goals also affect the market. Click here to read Part 2.