The global healthcare industry continues to face an unprecedented talent shortage. Without an influx of essential staff, healthcare organizations are struggling to cope with rising patient demand and clinician burnout while prioritizing patient safety and quality care. As hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical facilities continue to face high demand for critical services, the need for a reliable workforce of full-time personnel has never been greater. Let's explore how taking on more permanent staff in the medical field pays off in the long run.

How Healthcare Leaders Can Address Clinician Burnout with Full-Time Talent

Investing in full-time teams may be the key to addressing clinician burnout and workload imbalances. By hiring and retaining permanent workers, hospitals and healthcare organizations have greater control over managing labor supply shortages and achieving more sustainable staffing levels.

Full-Time Work Creates Reliable Staffing Levels

Full-time workers often stay within an organization for longer periods of time, preventing frequent turnover and providing stability to team structures. In addition, this allows for a depth of understanding within your company’s protocols, standards, and processes.

For this reason, employing full-time talent helps to maintain consistent staffing levels and improve workload distribution. Teams that are adequately staffed can perform their duties without placing excessive strain on individual practitioners—so that everyone has enough time to rest and recharge after a hard day’s work.

Permanent Teams Can Optimize Shift Scheduling

Having full-time teams in place allows healthcare organizations to develop rosters and predictable shifts that can be tailored around patient demand. In this approach, you can minimize your dependence on contract labor, who often have less reliable availability. With fewer resources spread thinly over a larger patient pool, employers can ensure that the right personnel are available at the right time while ensuring a reliable flow of medical services around the clock.

Having a larger pool of full-time healthcare workers may also reduce the need for unexpected overtime shifts, since there is often someone available to fill in for someone who needs time off.

Stable Team Structures Have a Positive Impact on Employee Wellness

Having a full-time team at the ready creates an atmosphere of structure and support that healthcare professionals operating in busy environments often need. With the right allocation of full-time workers, teams efficiently map out workloads and further fortify against overwhelm. This can help to curb stress levels among workers and reduce the risk of fatigue or other health issues that arise from long shifts and heavy workloads.

Additionally, with a stable team structure it is easier for healthcare leaders to track trends related to absenteeism or burnout rates across departments. By monitoring staff members' activity, you can develop strategies to best protect your workforce from excessive stress or fatigue and avoid more serious employee wellness concerns.

Full-Time Work Can Improve Employee Retention, Bottom Line, and Patient Safety

There are strong financial incentives for making the move to a full-time healthcare workforce. Further, this approach can be highly beneficial for patient care, ensuring medical practitioners are properly engaged in their role.

Improved Employee Retention and Reduced Costs

Full-time teams make it easier for organizations to retain top talent, since employees know that their jobs will be secure if they perform well. This results in fewer costs associated with onboarding and training new employees, staff turnover, and reliance on expensive contract workers to fill in gaps in care. Further, with a stable team structure, you can better predict and manage labor costs, resulting in greater financial stability over time.

Creating a Loyal and Engaged Workforce

Temporary workers often lack the security of a steady income. Additionally, they are rarely extended employer-provided benefits typically given to full-time staff members. Investing in healthcare talent for full-time positions with a base salary and benefits helps to cultivate an environment workers feel respected, valued, and appreciated for the work they do. This, in turn, promotes job satisfaction, high morale, and greater motivation to deliver quality healthcare services to patients.

Higher Quality of Patient Care

Employees who are invested in their work often perform better and provide higher quality care for patients. Since full-time healthcare professionals have greater job security than contract workers, they are more likely to stay within your organization for longer periods of time—fostering stronger relationships with patients and coworkers alike. Having full-time teams can also improve collaboration between clinicians, and having a consistent team results in improved patient safety outcomes due to increased continuity of care.

Building a Full-Time Healthcare Workforce Requires Careful Planning and Execution

As hospitals and healthcare organizations worldwide strive to provide quality care, investing in full-time positions may be one of the best ways to address clinician burnout while helping to alleviate heavy workloads and long shifts across departments. Full-time teams are also advantageous because they provide clinicians with the necessary support to maintain morale while improving patient outcomes through increased collaboration and communication.

Hiring permanent healthcare talent is an important task that requires careful planning and execution. LevelUP is a proud provider of award-winning talent solutions. Our healthcare recruitment division is identified as a leader in the industry, delivering sustainable end-to-end embedded RPO solutions to work alongside your team to bring forth best-in-class talent for full-time placements. We are dedicated to working closely with every client, customizing our talent programs specifically to each organization’s unique requirements. Our comprehensive and proven approach has allowed healthcare leaders to rest easy knowing that they are matched with only the best suitable candidates for permanent placements. To learn more, schedule a consultation today.