The Crucial Role Clinical Quality Plays in Talent Placement
Providing quality talent to healthcare organizations requires more than recruiting candidates for open roles. Each position is unique, from the level of acuity of the patients who will be cared for to the diversity goals of the organization, its culture, and more.
Two years of providing care during the pandemic has caused resource constraints made worse by attrition and higher vacancy rates, resulting in physical and mental fatigue for the entire spectrum of caregivers.
The importance of providing the right talent requires organizations take a holistic approach to understand the nuances of each role so that every placement is a success and helps that organization align with their long-term goals.
Understanding is the Start of a Relationship
Every healthcare organization across the country has its own challenges, opportunities, and culture, and each require tailored approaches to acquiring talent. A great hire for the ICU at one organization might not be the right fit for the ICU at a hospital across town. The importance of providing the right fit for every role – the right experience, qualities, motivations, etc., – requires a deep of understanding of every opening and candidate.
At AMN Healthcare, we have a dedicated clinical team of more than 50 professionals on staff. They have developed a proprietary tool and process to conduct a methodical assessment of client talent needs. With this tool, the team collects information and ask a series of questions to ensure we understand what technologies an organization uses, how their systems operate, and how their processes and workflows are organized to support patient care services. Additionally, we work to understand the procedures they are most focused on providing, and what efforts are underway or planned in preparation for accreditation or Magnet® certification.
“The client conversations are incredibly important because many of us were the client before we joined AMN Healthcare,” said Paulette Anest, Head of Clinical and Education Solutions at AMN Healthcare. “It's about understanding exactly what they are looking for in high quality healthcare professionals, with the right experience, credentials, and personalities needed to help fulfill each organization’s mission to provide care for their patients.”
Many conversations will center around their culture of safety. It’s important to understand a client’s safety communication practices, how they conduct patient rounding, and how they report quality and risk events. Every healthcare professional placed should feel psychologically and physically safe to support that organization and their patients.
Anest continued, “It's important to have those conversations, because everything hinges upon building meaningful relationships with clients and our colleagues in the practice environment.”
Diverse Talent is Needed to Support Diverse Organizations
To better serve the organizations we partner with, we have developed a diverse clinical leadership team – diverse in culture, education, experience, and the practice environment. It starts with hiring key talent with backgrounds representative of our clients and their practice settings.
Clinical leaders at AMN Healthcare are licensed professionals, most of whom have advanced degrees, masters or doctorally prepared. The team is experienced in leading people, projects, and programs, ensuring they have the knowledge to handle talent needs of any size. In addition to the right educational credentials and professional development, they are experienced in human resources, quality, clinical practice, and risk management.
By intentionally hiring professionals with a variety of work backgrounds and developing a culture of shared knowledge and experience, we have greater ability to support our clients regardless of the care setting.
We invest heavily in onboarding and ongoing development of our clinical leaders. We are always looking at where competency gaps might be, where we need to continue to grow people, and where they want to grow professionally. We support their continuing education and the maintenance of license and professional memberships and associations.
Our clinical leaders represent AMN Healthcare broadly in the communities our clients serve as advocates for patient safety, the wellbeing of healthcare professionals, and more broadly for the health of our nation. It is also critical that our leaders are invested in the team’s success and have a professional vision for themselves.
Recruiting the Best Takes a Team Approach
Our team approach extends to providing education to our recruiters. Through our Education Solutions department, we provide ongoing learning for recruiters and account managers around new practice environments, new disciplines, and new specialties or procedures. This information is used when conducting the skills mapping process and understanding different levels of unit and patient acuity. Our recruiters match the skills and competences of our candidates with the level of care that's provided in each unit to ensure safety, that they’re working at the top of their license, and are growing as professionals with every assignment.
We look at the quality of a candidate’s experience, not just their work history. We take great care in assessing their level of knowledge on specific procedures to determine if they can function independently in a particular setting, if they need more support and supervision, or if they’re not the right match for the needs of that specific role.
Through the application and booking process – virtual interviewing, obtaining references, assessing skills, and additional information gathering – our clinical team and recruiters work closely to ensure the right placement is made every time. And beyond placement, we continue to support our healthcare professionals through professional coaching, conflict resolution training, mental health resources, and support through times of personal or professional crisis.
“Through the development of standards and designed processes, we always look at ‘systemness’ to ensuring system integration and process standardization,” said Anest. “Doing this ensures that our healthcare professionals, our clients, and our supplier partners are supported. By developing processes that give them all a better experience we have become a partner they can lean on.”
For more information on how our investments in our people and healthcare professionals can help your organization and the communities you serve, please email client.services@amnhealthcare.com.