Putting Patients First: Do you have enough time for patient care on the job as a Travel Nurse?

Travel Nurses exist not just so you can build an awesome career and have great adventures throughout the country (although these sure are amazing perks!). Travel Nursing helps facilities provide better patient care and obtain better patient results, all the while taking some of the burden off of their perm nurses.

But even with the benefits of Travelers to help sustain hospital staffing levels, are you and your colleagues — whether perm staff or Travel Nurses — getting enough time to devote to patient care?

A recent Wall Street Journal, “Nurses Shift, Aiming for More Time With Patients,” tackles just that issue, detailing facilities that are working to allow nurses more time for paperwork and less time for administrative and other tasks.

The article states that some studies show that between “hunting for supplies, tracking down medications, filling out paperwork at the nursing station and looking for missing test results,” nurses can spend as few as less than two hours of a 12-hour shift engaged in direct patient care. Conversely, the article says, citing additional research, the more time nurses are able to spend at the bedside, the more satisfied patients are. With more direct patient care from nurses, patients are also less likely to suffer falls, infections, and errors in medication.

The WSJ piece discusses how some hospitals are working to shift extraneous and administrative tasks to CNAs and other staff members, freeing nurses to provide more engaged patient care as well as being there to comfort and educate family members.

“We shouldn’t be using expensive professional nursing time doing unnecessary and inefficient things when that time could be reinvested in direct patient care,” Patricia Rutherford, a nurse and vice president at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement told the WSJ.

My favorite part of the article is when a nurse, Corinne White, is quoted talking about how when she is able to be more present with patients they are more likely to open up to her and, in turn, more likely to efficiently and openly communicate their needs, which all leads to a superior patient outcome. It was Nurse White’s commentary on the importance of nurse-patient bonding that really hits home as to why this issue is so important.

Whether in past perm positions or at various facilities during your career as a Traveler, what have you noticed about Travel Nurses and patient care time available? Have you seen major fluctuations between different facilities in how much time you are spending on patient care?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments — on Travel Nurses and patient care, or anything else regarding this interesting WSJ article.

Ask a Travel Nurse: Can I switch specialties while Travel Nursing?

Ask a Travel Nurse Question:

I have been an ICU nurse at a small hospital for almost four years now and I’m very interested in Travel Nursing. If I were to travel, would I only be able to take ICU positions? Or could I possibly get OR, PACU, or Cath lab job with no previous experience in those areas?

Ask a Travel Nurse Answer:

If you wish to work in any other areas while traveling I always encourage people to get that experience before they hit the road.

This is due to the fact that there will be little to no opportunities to cross-train while you are traveling.

However, you are in a specialty that does allow a little bit of wiggle room. I would say that you could possibly take an assignment in an area like PACU, since the skills are essentially the same. You would also likely be very able to take an assignment in a lesser acuity area such as telemetry or med-surg.

In doing so, you would want to make sure that the facility is well aware of your background during the interview process.

Now for areas that are specialized like OR or the Cath lab, I’m afraid you would have to have experience before embarking on a career in travel. Those are areas that require a separate set of skills that you just do not come by in the ICU.

I once toyed with the notion of going to the Cath lab as a full time staff nurse and could not even find a position that did not already require experience.

While I know that this may not be the answer you were hoping for, I hope it helps!

David