Healthcare is unlike most other industries in that demand never ceases. Hospitals and clinics are nearly always running at full capacity, so when their medical radiographers are sick, go on vacation, or start their maternity leave, the pressure on the remaining team can be unbearable. If you work in HR, how can you find skilled and experienced replacements, sometimes at short notice?
Many facilities have heard about the benefits of hiring a locum to cover radiology staffing shortages but aren’t sure about their options. This is where a radiology staffing agency like ProMed HR Solutions can help. If your team is overworked and stressed, or if you are paying too much in overtime, hiring locum practitioners can be a brilliant solution to these problems. In this blog, we’ll highlight 10 benefits of hiring a locum for your clinic or radiology department.
1. Cover Gaps in Staffing
When permanent staff is unavailable, locum tenens providers offer continuity of care. They give your team more resilience during sick leave, vacations, or family emergencies. When you work with ProMed HR Solutions, you can rest assured that everyone you bring in has been carefully screened not only for their clinical experience and skill but also for their fit within your hospital or clinic. We take the time to develop a relationship with your organization and make sure you know who to contact as soon as you have a planned or unexpected need.
2. Cover Increased Workload or Extended Hours
When the pandemic was at its height, many radiology departments and imaging centres postponed nonurgent imaging exams for months. Now several of these imaging facilities are dealing with a backlog. When you consider that these techs must take additional time to clean and sterilize the equipment between each patient, it’s easy to see how your current team can quickly get overwhelmed.
One of the biggest benefits of hiring a locum is that you have the temporary support you need to cover this increased workload, provide relief to overworked staff, and even extend your hours to ensure that imaging services don’t fall significantly behind schedule. If you need support with your radiology staffing needs, ProMed HR Solutions can provide a workforce solution that gets you back on track.
3. Save Money on Overtime
Locums can actually help you to save money by cutting down on the overtime you need to pay your in-house imaging technologists. This simple but often overlooked fact can save your facility a lot of money, especially during times of greater patient demand.
4. Better Work-Life Balance for Your Staff
We’ve all heard about the ‘Great Resignation’: workers in all industries, including healthcare, are leaving demanding jobs to seek a better work-life balance. Using locum technologists can give your teams the healthier lifestyle they want without risking a large workforce reduction or loss of your highest-performing employees.
At ProMed HR Solutions, we can ensure that you have coverage for anything from a two-week vacation to an extended maternity leave. Our qualified and experienced imaging specialists are ready to support your team upon arrival, allowing facility operations to carry on smoothly.
5. Prevent Staff Burnout
According to this 2020 study, healthcare workers regularly reported feeling burned out, which impacted their job satisfaction and relationships with their families. In fact, many respondents stated that their workload negatively impacted their mental health, and some even considered suicide due to the stress of their job.
Incorporating locum technologists in your radiology clinic or department can manage the demands on your workforce by allowing employees to take time off when they need to without impacting patient care. You can prevent burnout and ensure that everyone is healthy and engaged while on shift.
6. Prevent Human Error
There is a recognized correlation between working long hours and increased risk of medical error. To provide quality care and prevent dangerous mistakes, proper staffing and reasonable hours are essential. A locum radiographer helps to protect your facility- and your patients – from medical and diagnostic errors by ensuring that your regular staff aren’t constantly working overtime and can take a day or two off when they need to.
7. ‘Test-Drive’ a New Technologist
Hiring new team members is always a gamble. A technologist with stellar credentials may not turn out to be a good fit for your company culture, and even a candidate who starts off on the right foot could end up not being the best choice for the position. When that happens, you have to go through the unpleasant task of terminating their employment and resuming interviews.
By bringing in a locum to fill the vacancy on your staff, there’s less pressure to hire quickly, and if the new hire doesn’t work out, their workload won’t have to be allocated among the rest of the team. If the locum does excellent work, you can either extend their contract or speak to their radiology staffing agency about hiring them.
8. Fill in for Retiring Staff
If one of your senior radiologists is retiring and your other technologists don’t have the bandwidth to add more patients to their already-high workload, you can bring in a locum to cover the gap while you start interviewing replacements.
The locum technologist can make it possible for the other employees to maintain their current patient load, so that your clinic doesn’t lose revenue or have to turn away patients. Since many locum contracts can be renewed or extended, you can take the time you need to find the right replacement for retiring team members.
9. Quality Candidates Assured
When you have short-term staffing needs, it can be hard to find a medical imaging professional with the relevant experience. Like other medical technologists, x-ray techs are in high demand, so how can you attract a quality candidate to cover extended hours or staff vacations?
By working with a radiology staffing agency, you can rest assured that all candidates have been carefully screened beforehand. ProMed HR Solutions reviews every professional’s resume to identify their competencies and ensure that they are compatible with your needs. We also-
- Interview them
- Conduct a criminal record check
- Confirm their availability
We maintain an extensive database of certified healthcare specialists, each with a minimum of two years’ experience, so you can rest assured that the technologist we recommend will meet and probably exceed your expectations.
10. Improve Team and Patient Satisfaction
By retaining locums, clinics and hospitals ensure continuity of care for patients and a balanced workload for their clinical staff. ProMed HR Solutions vets all digital imaging technologists ahead of time to ensure that the locum you engage will be a good fit. We understand the value that you place on team culture and make sure that the professionals we send will make a positive impact on team satisfaction as well as the quality of patient services.
Do You Have Questions About Hiring Locums?
If you do, pick up the phone and call ProMed HR Solutions at 1-833-776-6336. You can also contact us online.
For years, we have been providing hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare organizations with skilled, competent, and vetted medical imaging technologists in modalities like the following:
- Ultrasound and Echo
- MRI
- CT
- X-ray
- Nuclear Medicine
- CLXT (Combined Lab and X-ray)
As a national leader in healthcare staffing and workforce solutions, we are dedicated to quality results and client satisfaction. This commitment has earned us the trust of healthcare facilities and government agencies across North America, and we look forward to delivering similar personnel solutions for you.
