Celebrating healthcare heroes during Nurses Month
Happy Nurses Week and Nurses Month! After the courageous and tireless efforts of nurses over the last months, it’s so appropriate to have Nurses Week expanded to Nurses Month. We’re excited to spend the month of May celebrating, recognizing and thanking nurses our real-life superheroes.
We’re honored to be able to support nurses by providing smart scheduling and credentialing systems that enable you to protect, value and empower your nurses. These tools support strategic staff scheduling initiatives that can help you overcome pressing challenges, such as staffing shortages and turnover.
A better work/life balance
ABILITY SMARTFORCE® Scheduler makes it easy for front-line staff to be involved in the scheduling process. With more control over their own schedule, nurses can balance their time and energy to ensure they can fulfill both personal commitments and work demands with less stress or threat of burnout.
These positive effects on nurses’ well-being are especially valuable now because the pandemic has taken a toll on healthcare staff. According to the American Nurses Foundation’s COVID-19 Impact Survey, the top four feelings nurses have experienced in the last 14 days are exhausted (51%), overwhelmed (43%), irritable (37%) and anxious/unable to relax (36%).1
A better work environment
Another important way scheduling systems benefit healthcare staff is by supporting a safer, more collaborative work environment. Here are a few ways that Schedule Management helps create a more positive workplace for nurses:
- Predictive analytics ensure that nurses and patients are aligned appropriately so nurses have balanced, equitable workloads.
- Streamlined open shift management workflows and mobile tools foster schedule collaboration between unit managers and front-line staff.
- Mobile shout-out functionality makes it easy for leaders to recognize staff members for teamwork, extra efforts and key events, such as their birthday or work anniversary.
- Credentialing software makes it easy to pair the right nurse with the right patient while enabling nurses to work to the top of their license
Creating workforce stability
While nurses are healthcare superheroes, they are not invincible. Nurses and direct care workers are facing burnout, which is exacerbating staffing shortages and turnover issues. So, while we celebrate nurses, it’s also critical to consider how we will stabilize and safeguard the healthcare workforce.
If your organization isn’t taking action to address these challenges, you’re losing ground. For ideas about practical steps you can take to have a meaningful impact on staff morale, check out our eBook, Seven Staffing Strategies that Value, Protect and Optimize Nurses.
1. Pulse on the Nation’s Nurses COVID-19 Survey Series: Year One COVID-19 Impact Assessment Survey, American Nurses Foundation, February 2021, https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/work-environment/health-safety/disaster-preparedness/coronavirus/what-you-need-to-know/year-one-covid-19-impact-assessment-survey/
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