Where Can You Find the Best Travel Nurses in Los Angeles, California?

Within the professional world of healthcare, staffing issues and finding the right staff for a facility are some of the most common and difficult problems to solve. From the Covid pandemic to overall societal issues causing a “Great Resignation”, businesses around the country are struggling to find workers that can fill critical positions and perform job duties that must be done. Rather than let patients suffer or lose out on revenue, many healthcare facilities have turned to temporary or travel nurses, who provide many important benefits to those utilizing their services. 

If you’re involved in the healthcare field and have been struggling to fill open positions, you may be wondering where to find workers like this that can come in, do a job with minimal training, and complete critical tasks that would otherwise be left undone. In this article, we’ll cover some of the best ways to find travel nurses and other medical staff that can fill in some crucial holes your organization might be looking to fill. 

Staffing Agencies

By far the most common, popular, and efficient way to find travel nurses is through staffing agencies. In fact, using the services of these staffing agencies is so ubiquitous that many travel employees refer to themselves as “agency workers” or “agency employees”. This is the simplest and most efficient way to fill spots that need to be filled as quickly as possible.

There are many benefits to utilizing the services of a staffing agency, such as:

• They provide workers as needed, quickly, and on demand.

Sometimes, especially in healthcare, you need to fill a role with no delay. While a typical hiring process can take a long time, have many delays, and sometimes leave positions unfilled for weeks or months, staffing agencies specialize in providing workers ASAP, right when they are needed. In a field like healthcare, this can literally make the difference between life or death for patients, and can save a facility from expensive or difficult legal issues that can arise from improper staffing ratios. 

• Hiring traveling nurses reduces stress on other staff.

To reduce the need for traveling nurses, you’ll want to take steps to ensure that your full-time or regular staff don’t suffer from burnout. Hiring traveling nurses can take a critical load off of your other staff, leading to overall higher retention rates. Greater employee satisfaction and job enjoyment translate into a better workplace for everyone, whether that’s administration, kitchen staff, or housekeeping. 

• Travel nurses save money on benefits, PTO, and overtime.

While the salaries of travel nurses can be higher than other employees, in the end, they are a cost-effective way to fill holes in the schedule. They are overall a less-complicated employee to have on payroll, as the staffing agency will usually deal with their salary and other requirements. 

Other Options

If you or your facility don’t wish to utilize the services of a staffing agency, your options for finding and recruiting travel nurses are much more limited. These agencies are the primary way that travel nurses find work and land contracts, and without them, you will be limited to advertising on job sites like Indeed or Craigslist. Advertising for jobs this way can lead to many of the same problems as trying to hire regular employees: listings that sit unanswered for weeks, leaving positions unfilled, and workers with unusual or specific demands to come work that makes recruiting more difficult. 

Another way is to network within the healthcare field, by contacting professionals you are friendly with, sister organizations, or other facilities within your same company. However, this isn’t a sure bet, and many other facilities will be struggling with the same staffing issues you are. Healthcare is suffering from a massive wave of resignations largely spurred on by stress due to the Covid pandemic, with about 3% of the healthcare workforce quitting each month.

This problem isn’t likely to resolve itself anytime soon, leaving healthcare recruiters and staffers with few options. To help with recruiting travel nurses, always make sure to provide a job listing that is as detailed as possible, listing all requirements and certifications that are needed along with accurate and informative job duties. If you find someone that’s interested, don’t waste time – reach out quickly and schedule a phone interview, as traveling nurses have a lot of options and will move forward quickly with other contracts.

Buying Time 

Although hiring travel nurses might not be preferable to hiring and retaining quality full-time employees, it is often the best option for organizations that find themselves in a pinch. While working on building a strong internal recruiting infrastructure, using the services of a staffing agency is the best way to buy yourself time to find qualified professionals to fill open positions. Reach out to a staffing agency today and make sure that your organization, and patients that rely on your care providers, won’t suffer.