Does your hospital use agency nurses?

[HappyNurse2005, RN]

I see agency nurses mentioned in several threads. We don't use them.

We have a resource pool w/ in the hospital of nurses that can go to the floor if need be, they can go to any floor.

They are familiar with the hospital,and often to the floor if they ahve been there before.

They are never treated badly, not on my floor.

I have heard of agency nurses being used in local LTC facilities, a LPN in my RN class did the agency thing and went to work at LTC facilities for extra money in school

[suzanne4, RN]

I have worked agency for over 25 years ................and in almost every specialty area that exists.

Why does it matter if a facility uses agency? Most nurses cannot work all areas, that is where agency nurses come in. Especially for specialty areas such as OR, etc. To hire a new nurse to fill that position, it will take usually a minimum of three months for their orientation, an agency nurse will drop in and can be working their own assignment that same day with enough experience. Otherwise in some facilities, ORs need to be closed, etc.

[Dave11, BSN, RN]

there are a few where i work. the hospital brings them in as a temporary measure till they can hire someone.

i like working with agency and travel nurses. on the whole, i've found them to be very good workers and fun to work with. some of my co-workers have issues with them only because they are not union members.

[CFwoman]

Our hospital has to because they can't seem to keep any regular staff. Personally, I absolutely LOVE agency Nurses. They are very bright, have a wonderful attitude and they don't put up with the BS like many of the staff Nurses do.

[HappyNurse2005, RN]

I have nothing against them, I was just wondering. Since our facility doesn't use them, I was just curious about ones who do-

[kathc]

I work in a 500 bed LTC and we do use agency nurses and aides. We do float if possible, but there is a minimum staffing level on each floor. Unfortunately we don't have enough of our own to fully staff. I've found agency people to be fun to work with and very competent. Some of them work a majority of the time at our facility so they are familiar with our policies.

[ValerieB]

We use agency nurses at my hospital, but we are using them less and less. There are some agency nurses that are absolutely wonderful and we try and recruit them to work on staff permanently. We also have a huge list of "do not returns" for agency nurses. I just had oriented an agency nurse is coming on board with us because she was getting canceled so much.

[fergus51]

We use agency and imo it would be better to have a good float pool. Agency nurses who come to our hospital once in a while just can't be expected to keep up on how we do things. We've had a lot of problems because of it. Unfortunately we don't have a float pool, so this is how we'll keep doing things.

[ValerieB]

We also have a float pool. We have two of them and I am a float pool nurse. It's not enough sometimes. I know the hospital's goal is to eliminate agency totally, but I don't think that's ever going to happen. Like I said, some agency nurses who come to our hospital allot are wonderful and there are ones that work their 8 or 12 hours and leave and could care less. I guess because they have no loyalty to the institution.