Nurses know what happens when a colleague has to call out due to sickness or an emergency or is due for vacation—others often end up working double shifts. If you want to, that’s one thing. But when it’s required because of lack of staff, it can cause the nurses to feel overworked and contribute to their stress and anxiety. There’s now a nursing staffing agency that operates via an App, and it’s changing the way nurse staffing occurs.
“There have always been nursing staffing agencies that have served our clientele for more than 100 years, but they have historically been using traditional, inefficient methods of scheduling via spreadsheets, fax machines, and telephone. We believe that we are the first truly on-demand, app-based nursing agency for the per-diem market,” explains Chris Caulfield, RN, FNP-C, one of the founders of IntelyCare. “There wasn’t a good solution for nursing coverage for last-minute call outs or to fill in holes in the schedulers’ calendar on a shift-by-shift basis.”
Caulfield co-founded the business with health care IT expert Ike Nnah in 2015. They currently serve post-acute nursing organizations using RNs, LPNs, and CNAs. To date, they serve more than 200 skilled nursing facilities, rehabs, and assisted living facilities in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
The business is changing how on-demand nurses are used because they are able to cover a number of shifts that are requested by the facilities with only two- to twelve-hours’ notice. As a result, staff nurses don’t have to pull a mandatory double, and other nurses who can fill the spot get to choose when, where, and how much they would like to work.
Caulfield stresses, though, that this type of work is not for new graduates, as they believe nursing professionals should have at least a year of experience before they begin floating to various facilities. But being able to browse an App and determine extra shifts they can take on is already changing the workplace for nurses.
“On-demand nursing is a great option for nurses who want more flexibility, higher pay, and who like a change of scenery,” says Caulfield. “I strongly believe that over the next two-five years, there will be some flavor of on-demand nursing—either from an outside staffing agency or an Internal per-diem pool—at every licensed health care facility in the U.S.”
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