When tasks become overwhelming and work is no longer enjoyable, it’s hard to keep staff at your healthcare facility both healthy and happy. This means it becomes hard to recruit and retain talented workers in the long-run. It’s a vicious cycle that is easy to fall into and hard to get out of, especially when working under a shortage in physicians and healthcare professionals. At this point, you may be considering hiring Locum Tenens to fill the gap and keep your staff (and yourself) from stressing out.
Here are a few ways choosing Locum Tenens coverage can keep your staff healthy and happy:
1. Providing coverage to close the gaps
When business is booming, how will you and your staff manage if one of your physicians has to take a leave of absence or leaves altogether? Hiring Locum Tenens can provide coverage when you’re facing the possibility of being understaffed. Even a few weeks of being understaffed can take a toll on current staff, causing stress and being overworked, which can lead to health issues like stress-related illnesses. Keep your staff happy and healthy by maintaining coverage in another staff member’s absence.
2. Prevent burnout when expanding facility capacity
Expanding capacity of a healthcare facility can become a difficult situation if not handled properly. Hiring a Locum Tenens professional can help your practice expand capacity without long-term consequences to your staff. For example, when you want to expand capacity but are uncertain of how quickly you’ll be able to attract and retain new patients, hiring a permanent physician may not be the best idea.
Alternatively, without hiring someone to provide coverage for an influx of new patients can lead to an overworked staff, who then become prone to burnout, a widespread issue facing the healthcare industry. By hiring a Locum Tenens to provide coverage, you can prevent burnout from plaguing your staff and ‘test the waters’ with expanding capacity and measuring new patient numbers.
3. Keep staff happy by retaining staff and patients
With a happier, healthier staff, your practice is more likely to retain staff and patients, ensuring a smooth flow of business. When problems with gaps in patient flow and physician coverage are presented, it can be easy for staff to experience burnout and feel obligated to seek employment elsewhere. When feeling the effects of burnout, patient satisfaction often declines because work isn’t completed efficiently or effectively, thus causing patients to go elsewhere. When your practice is proactive in providing coverage and preventing burnout by hiring Locum Tenens physicians, you can excel in staff retention and ultimately, keep your staff healthier and happier.
While there are many ways to keep your staff happy with overall operations, choosing to hire Locum Tenens is one of the easiest and best solutions to keep your staff happy and healthy and maintain successful operations at the same time. If you are seeking Locum Tenens for opportunities available in your practice, contact Eskridge & Associates today!