COVID-19 has changed the ways hospitals and healthcare facilities use their staff. To respond to the need for healthcare employees during the pandemic, healthcare staffing professionals are working tirelessly to support the needs of healthcare organizations and medical companies.
By taking this initiative, they can help businesses stay operational when they are needed the most. Employees in both temporary and remote assignments are being utilized during these anxious and stressful times.
How Do You Need to Staff Your Facility?
If you manage a healthcare site and need additional staff, the provisions of benefits of healthcare staffing professionals are numerous. You can use a healthcare staffing agency to secure the following COVID-19 healthcare employees:
- Licensed nurses at pandemic testing sites
- Licensed nurses for correctional facilities, skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), and hospitals
- Medical administrative personnel
- Desktop support specialists
- Customer service associates
- Payroll managers and employees
- Contact tracers for monitoring the spread of COVID-19
One of the highly important assignments during the pandemic has been the use of contact tracers. To understand their role, you first have to define the activity of contact tracing.
Why Contact Tracing Is an Important Activity
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), contact tracing involves safeguarding people in community settings from the spread of COVID-19. The process involves two important functions:
- Giving people who have been diagnosed with the virus information and resources for safe isolation.
- Informing individuals who have had close contact with a person with COVID-19 about what they need to do to follow up. The protocol they follow depends on their inoculation status or their medical history prior to getting infected with SARS-CoV-2. The follow-up process may include quarantine, further testing, or wearing personal protective wear, such as a mask.
To ensure confidentiality, healthcare staffing professionals must vet candidates who are strongly acquainted with the importance of not sharing personal and medical information with people outside the realm of the healthcare team.
Contact Tracer Job Skills
To staff health sites with contract tracers, healthcare staffers seek people who have the following specialized skills:
- A clear understanding of patient confidentiality and the ability to interview contacts in a private and secure setting.
- A knowledge of medical terms and how infections can be spread. Employees should know details about the infection’s exposure time, the infection period, possible interactions, pre-symptomatic responses, and general symptoms of the condition.
- An ability to show great empathy and sensitivity.
- The ability to interview people so they feel confident and assured.
- Knowledge of crisis counseling and the ability to refer patients privately for further assistance.
- The ability to locate people who are difficult to contact or engage in a dialogue.
- The know-how to refer people to social, medical, or healthcare management resources, as needed.
- The ability to relate to the people seeking help in a specific healthcare setting.
Therefore, if you need a contact tracer, you need to align yourself with a healthcare staffing company that truly understands your needs for staying on top of the healthcare needs of your community at large.
Staffing specialists must also use the same discretion when screening nursing applicants and similar healthcare personnel. Whether an employee is representing your business directly or indirectly, you need to make sure that they have the required skillset that will keep you operational during an especially uncertain time.
For example, licensed nurses, who are needed at COVID-19 testing sites must bring some unique and special skills to this job role.
Working at a COVID-19 Testing Site: What Employees Need to Know
To work as a testing site staff member, the healthcare provider must take on the following responsibilities:
- Set up the testing site or close it at the end of testing for the day.
- Prepare the items for testing and maintain and clean the computers and electronics at the site.
- Check in the people being tested.
- Ask preliminary screening questions, and verify healthcare details, if applicable, and print the labels for the test tubes used for samples.
- Take a saliva sample for assessment per the COVID-19 saliva test.
- Confirm the sample collection in a test tube and direct the tester to the assembly of a biohazard bag.
- Clean and sanitize supplies, tables, and equipment with a disinfectant.
If the nurse is part of the lead staff, he or she must be able to provide help and additional direction, if required. He or she may have to cover lunch schedules or break times for other workers at the testing site as well. In addition, the testing site employee may have to help the driver who picks up the samples for transport.
The people who take on this type of assignment must be able to operate a computer and effectively communicate instructions to the people being tested for the virus. They should also be physically capable of standing for long periods and must wear the proper face covering at all times.
Other Important Skills
- A nurse who takes on the role at a testing site must be able to think critically and show, from past experience, that they are good at problem-solving and setting priorities.
- They must be able to recognize problems and know how to follow up appropriately.
- They must also show that they have a background in interpersonal communication skills or customer service so they can build professional relationships with both patients and colleagues.
- Candidates for this role must show they can constructively respond to conflict and can respond to inquiries receptively and in a non-threatening way.
- Past proof that the employee has a good attendance record is needed as is the ability to adapt to changing healthcare schedules and needs.
- Applicants should also have proficient typing skills and be familiar with electronic healthcare records.
- They should be technologically adept and have a high sense of responsibility when it comes to assuring the safety of everyone involved at the testing facility. This includes reporting any unsafe practices to the manager overseeing the site.
Why You Need a Third-Party Healthcare Staffing Provider
By using the services of a healthcare staffing company, you can focus on running your medical facility and leave the human resource details to experts in the medical recruiting field.
As you can see, the jobs that need to be filled need the skills of an experienced staffing specialist. By using these services, you can focus on what you know best – managing your facility and ensuring that patients receive the best care possible.
Author bio- Milli Beamer has been helping employers find qualified employees using staffing agencies. She now wants to share her knowledge with others.
