by scott | Oct 19, 2022 | Blog, Job Seekers
We know our computers mess up our circadian rhythms for sleeping. But do you know what else can keep you up at night? The night shift. Working the night shift definitely is not for everyone. But there are some big benefits if you learn to hang out with the night owls of the nursing world. If you find yourself new in your career, or if you’ve recently decided to take up a new night shift, here are some tips and tricks to help you get through it!
Benefits of Working the Night Shift
The night shift usually comes with a pay differential but that’s not the only benefit. Unless you’re in the ER, the night shift can be a less demanding time for nurses. Most patients are sleeping and so are their families. There are no navigating questions from family members in most units overnight. This, along with the fact that most patients are comfortably sleeping, makes the night shift a less stressful alternative to daytime work. With that said, it can take time to teach your body to acclimate to staying up into the wee hours. This next section will give you some tips on how to set yourself up for success.
Getting used to your first nights as a new night shift worker can be hard. Try these tips to improve your adjustment period:
Get a full 8 hours of sleep before your shift.
Especially at first. Invest in some good blackout curtains to make sure the sun doesn’t interrupt your slumber. Your goal is to establish a steady routine where you gradually come down from work and are asleep within a couple of hours after you get home (or immediately if you can swing it). This probably means no caffeine after 3:00 am for most people. You should avoid checking the computer when you get home, too. (Remember what we said about your circadian rhythms?) Maybe take a warm bath or shower after every shift. Get your comfy jammies on. Read a book in bed. Whatever routine tells your body it’s time to come down from the job. Establish this as your new bedtime normal and you’ll be less likely to crash after your first few night shifts.
Organize your schedule around prioritizing healthy habits.
Eating healthy on the night shift takes some preparation. Make sure you’re avoiding sugar-filled foods and soda, which can be tempting for the quick rush they provide when you’re tired. Try to exercise either before or after your shift. For example, doing yoga when you get home after work can slow down your breathing and center you for sleep. Or, to wake up in the afternoon in preparation for your shift, get outside and exercise. We know night shift nurses can be prone to illnesses and weight gain. Why? Because you’re walking around less and burning fewer calories. Make sure you’re taking extra care to stay healthy before, during, and after your shift.
Stay busy during the night shift.
It will keep you from getting sleepy. Try spending time with the patients who are awake. Or, if there are special projects that your nurse manager needs done, sign up. The idea is, even if the shift is slow (as we mentioned, this is a big plus) that you are staying busy. Stocking supplies, charting, and more, can all be done to prep for the day shift.
Find balance.
This is the trick if you work the night shift. You don’t want your late hours to disrupt the rest of the family. You also don’t want to isolate yourself from them. Try to work in a routine, perhaps, where you’re packing the kid’s lunch before school or picking them up before you leave for work. Use your days off wisely to hang out with your friends and family. Use texting and email, Zoom, and phone calls, to be there even when you’re not.
If you’re ready for your next healthcare placement, get in touch with AG Globe Services today! Click here to check out our jobs and get ready to make your mark.
by scott | Oct 5, 2022 | Job Seekers
Travel nursing is one of the fastest-growing professions in the healthcare field today. Choosing to become a traveling nurse allows you to help others, and make a great income while exploring new cities. It sounds like a great life at first glance, but this job could also have some major drawbacks. This blog post will go over what you need to know about travel nursing before applying and accepting the job.
The Realities of Travel Nursing
The first reality of travel nursing is that the perks are big. First and foremost, the pay for a traveling nurse is often 20 or 30% higher than an on-staff nurse. In 2022, the average travel nurse’s salary will be just over $108,000. Travel nurses make more primarily for two reasons:
- There is a higher need for their services, so healthcare organizations are willing to pay more.
- Healthcare organizations allow for additional perks in these roles. While staff nurses make a salary or are on an hourly differential, travel nurses have a total pay package. That can include an hourly wage plus a sign-on bonus. There are typically travel reimbursements and stipends for expenses like food, mileage, and housing. One tip? Because perks are classified as reimbursements, they’re non-taxable. This means you can bring home a much higher package when compared to a full-time nurse.
With that said, there are also some difficulties that come with travel nursing, and you should be prepared bot both the ups and downs of the profession. Gypsy Nurse, who blogs about her traveling adventures, says, “Stuff happens, it’s not always going to be perfect, and it’s not supposed to be; in life and your career.” This is probably true of a regular nursing job, as well, so we’re not surprised travel nurses experience good days and bad. However, it’s exactly the variety of new locations, new challenges, and new team dynamics that attract nurses to the traveling lifestyle. But because humans seem to thrive on manageable routines, it’s important to pace yourself.
Traveling nurses say that it can be tiring with no home base. Certainly, you have to consider being on the road if you’re a parent with younger children. But the benefit is that you get to check out communities and facilities before committing. As a travel nurse, your ability to be flexible can net real returns in income quickly. You can increase your skills fast, which makes travel nursing particularly appealing for new providers just out of school.
No matter your situation, AG Globe Services is here to serve you. We offer full service to our top employers, providing them with the best talent in the healthcare field. If you’re looking for a new role, talk with our team today to find your best career fit.
by scott | Sep 21, 2022 | Blog, Client, Healthcare
Cold and Flu season is approaching and it is coming in HOT! While the 2021 flu season was milder than the previous year, partly thanks to the lingering COVID restrictions that kept us masked and sheltering in place. This year, the CDC recommends that, “adults 65 and older receive a high-dose influenza vaccine for better protection.” With masks off and COVID restrictions now lifted, it’s time to prepare your healthcare facility for an influx of patients, sick staff members, and of course, the stubborn viruses that are sure to visit us this fall. This blog will help you prepare for cold and flu season.
CDC Recommendations for 2022 Cold and Flu Season
The CDC published tips for preventing the spread of flu. Many of these will be familiar to you, but this year, in addition to reminding your patients of some of these best practices, you should also remind your staff:
- Encourage everyone, including your employees, to take the seasonal flu shot.
- Host a flu vaccine clinic at local companies. This will promote your facility in addition to protecting your community.
- Review your sick leave policies to ensure that your staff feels comfortable staying home when they need to. Set up a plan for per diem staff to step in to fill gaps as necessary. AG Globe Services can help in this area.
- Sick leave policies should support employees who come down with flu symptoms while on the job. Do not encourage them to “tough it out” to avoid spreading contagion. Create a culture where employees are comfortable confessing that they don’t feel well and back it up with plenty of paid sick time. This will help build an internal culture of wellness that will help your employees feel better about their health—and their jobs.
- Consider using telemedicine to your advantage in these cases. During COVID, quarantined clinicians who were asymptomatic conducted virtual patient visits. This is a great triage tool that keeps patients out of the ER and healthcare waiting rooms. But it also can make use of an exposed or slightly ill healthcare worker who can continue to work but do it safely at home where they’re not spreading germs around your facility.
- Continue to remind patients and staff of sanitary practices to stop the viral spread. Hand washing is the bare minimum, but also no-touch trash cans, hand sanitizer stations, and mask-wearing during peak flu season, are still important.
- Provide additional resources for employees and patients who are at risk for serious flu complications. Pregnant women and people with chronic diseases are particularly vulnerable at this time of the year.
Staying prepared for cold and flu season requires an extra effort. What can you do right now to prepare for staff illnesses that will leave you shorthanded this winter?
Mitigating Healthcare Staffing Shortages During Flu Season
Partnering with AG Globe Services now will help you prepare for flu season later on. We are a full-service healthcare outsourcing provider of top clinical and administrative talent. Healthcare organizations partner with our recruiting teams to help maintain appropriate staffing in their facilities during times of peak volume and labor shortages.
Are you still searching for a credible staffing partner? Contact our team today to get ready for the 2022 viral load. We can help.
by scott | Sep 7, 2022 | Blog, Healthcare, Job Seekers
Some people choose the job of being a nurse because it provides an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of patients and their families. Others do it for job security, great pay, and benefits. But the most surprising perk of working as a registered nurse is actually the flexibility of the role. Other careers just can’t compare. In this blog, we’ll discuss how being an RN can be flexible, what options you have to achieve job flexibility, and also where you can go from here if you decide your current role isn’t the right fit.
What are the Jobs with the Most Flexibility in the Nursing Field?
Finding better work/life balance in the nursing field isn’t as hard as you might imagine. Why? Because, first, you can select from a wide range of nursing environments, including:
- Hospitals
- Small group practices
- Schools
- Prisons
- Rehab centers
- Ambulatory surgery centers
- Home Health
- Mental health rehabilitation centers
- Colleges and universities
- Nursing homes
- The military
- And more
There are even completely virtual nursing jobs. NursingCE talks about them in a recent blog:
- Virtual healthcare recruiters sometimes use nurses as part of their technical screening processes.
- Telemedicine nurses work strictly in the virtual space, conducting patient evaluations, triage, diagnosing, and treating patients.
- Insurance nurses use work-from-home talent to screen, evaluate, and coach surgery patients or those with chronic illnesses.
- A Health Coach is a nurse entrepreneur of sorts; you can seek out specialized certifications and then build a book of contract business, or work full-time.
- Freelance nurse writers produce content for medical journals, blogs, and more.
Even if these roles don’t appeal to you, the traditional nursing profession isn’t a 9-to-5 job anymore. Today, you can work as a:
- Per diem nurses, are contract nurses that fill temporary staffing gaps. You’ll find per diems in almost any facility but particularly in hospitals during inpatient population spikes or just to fill in for someone on vacation. Per diem work is very flexible because you can choose to take or not take the job. Many times, these flexible roles come with benefits through the staffing agency that employs you.
- PRN nurses are on-call until they’re needed. These floating nurses are a bit like substitute teachers in that they fill in an unexpected gap in staffing.
- Travel nurses can pick up contract staffing roles around the country. These nurses make excellent money—some of the best rates in the industry—and most pay for lodging and more.
- Job-sharing nurses can split a full-time position along with benefits. This gives you the flexibility of a part-time job but with full-time perks.
In the past, the idea of nursing didn’t bring the vision of job flexibility and work/life balance. But today, the field has changed. Not only do you have job options and educational choices, but you can also pick the job based on its flexibility to fit your lifestyle.
If you’re ready for a more flexible lifestyle and a better work environment, call on AG Globe Services. We work with the leading healthcare companies in the U.S to provide them with the best RNs in the business.
by scott | Aug 24, 2022 | Blog, Job Seekers
You’ve seen them on T.V. and encountered these clinical angels in real-life. Registered nurses (RNs) are the backbone of the healthcare profession. They perform their life-saving duties in clinical settings across the U.S. As a career profession, having an R.N. designation means you will have your pick of jobs in the coming years. The latest data shows the U.S. will need 13 million nurses to join the profession in the next decade to keep up with demand.
In this blog, we’re shining a career spotlight on R.N.s. We’ll discuss the basics of the job, what education path most people take, and the personal qualities that make a good R.N. We’ll also touch on the different specialties you can go into once you become an R.N. If you’re ready to explore a career as an R.N., browse our open roles today!
Understanding the R.N. Role
R.N.s provide necessary care and caring to patients within the medical field. These professionals do it all: From communicating care instructions to patients to providing it. Nurses can:
- Administer treatments to patients.
- Assist doctors in treating patients.
- Coordinate specialty care teams.
- Perform diagnostic testing.
- Operate medical equipment.
- Comfort patients and families
- Follow up on patient care.
- And more!
An R.N. can work in a variety of settings. There are R.N.s in schools and prisons as well as nursing homes and hospitals. You’ll see a nurse in an E.R. and nurses even participate in surgical procedures. Some of the settings you’ll encounter as an R.N. include:
- Private and public hospitals where you will typically work as part of a specialized unit, such as intensive care (ICU) or the emergency department (E.R.).
- Ambulatory health clinics are often specialized around care delivery. For example, there are freestanding surgical hospitals devoted to orthopedics and clinics that provide dialysis treatment—to name just two of the many options out there.
- Residential care and nursing facilities typically provide long-term care to the elderly and infirm. There are also facilities that offer rehabilitative treatment for patients trying to recover from surgery or a traumatic accident.
- Private medical practices are often the first point of care for patients. Many build long-term relationships with their patients, and you’ll find nurses working hard to build your trust and treat your illnesses.
While the settings for nursing vary, so too do the specialty areas you can pursue as an R.N. For example, you could pursue an Associates Degree (ADN) in nursing or a Bachelor’s (BSN), however many nurses stay in school or go back to receive a Master’s Degree (MSN). The MSN prepares you to take on supervisory and administrative positions within a healthcare setting.
Then there are the medical specialty areas to pursue. You could become a gerontology nurse and work with the elderly. On the opposite side of the spectrum, you could become a neonatal or a pediatric nurse. There are jobs and rewarding work for all of these professions—and more.
If you have a desire to heal and help people and are ready to change your career path, perhaps nursing is the right profession to consider. A.G. Globe is standing by to help you find your dream R.N. job. If you’re thinking about a career move, check out our job listings and get in touch with our team.
