Healthcare staff, from the minute they’re hired to the day they retire, experience a dynamic and stressful professional life. While this is rewarding work, healthcare clinics are challenging environments to work and thrive in. Learn the five best ways to set caregivers up for success in your facility.
Hire Passionate Individuals
The best healthcare clinics consist of passionate, driven staff who care about their work and patients. As such, it’s vital that you take care when hiring your workforce for your facility. The essential traits of a potentially successful caregiver include patience, mental fortitude/presence, compassion, and overall people skills. More importantly, a great caregiver is a willing collaborator, boundary setter/respecter, and help seeker. Additionally, organized and detail-oriented individuals are always more successful in dynamic working environments such as healthcare facilities. Ensure you find caregivers who possess all these traits when hiring new talent.
Onboarding Process Considerations
Once hired, it’s crucial that you reward your talented staff by setting up a desirable working environment. First, ensure your onboarding process is exciting, engaging, and, most importantly, digestible – poorly conducted onboarding may cause employees to leave earlier than anticipated. Prioritize introductions to healthcare teams and departments rather than having new hires complete paperwork and mandated training videos. These less enticing aspects are better saved for a different time, once relationships between staff are successfully sewn. Lastly, incorporate online learning elements and social events into the onboarding period to further establish a desirable environment.
Maintain an Organized Facility
We mentioned before the dynamic, fast-paced nature of working healthcare environments – this action is often the cause of stressors and distractions that detract from overall facility success. The best way to significantly reduce these workplace complications is by providing employees with a competent organization system for office supplies, medical documents, and other relevant items. Simple objects like high-quality nursing clipboards, ring binders, dividers, sheet protectors, adhesive labels, and more offer caregivers more durable tools designed to make their jobs easier.
Encourage Collaboration
Much like any healthcare sector, the professional world of caregiving is full of political complexities and niche nuances that require years of experience to understand, let alone recognize. For example, many caregivers come from a private, “home call” background. Individuals from private/small practices are often quite independent and less inclined to work with the team. However, it’s essential that you encourage your caregivers to collaborate frequently, especially when problem-solving. Ultimately, better teamwork and communication will make your facility operate effectively and smoothly.
Provide Proper Mental Health Support
Good mental health is quite scarce in the healthcare world, especially during these past few years of the pandemic. Caregivers, specifically, endure plenty of hardships and traumas in just one normal work week. In fact, caregivers are 114 percent more likely to experience depression and anxiety than professionals in different fields.
As such, management must provide their staff with the proper mental health support and resources to ensure productivity and, most importantly, improve their overall well-being. The most effective method for increasing mental health for all caregivers is by finding insurance plans that cover competent therapeutic practices. Additionally, encourage employees to prioritize their mental well-being above all else, taking personal time when practical and necessary.
Follow these five tips to set your caregivers up for success in your facility. When in doubt, utilize online resources such as Mental Health America for superior office stress management treatments and techniques.