Nurses do it all. Many people would rather talk to a nurse than to a doctor. While state laws govern the tasks registered nurses may perform, it is usually the work setting that determines their day to day duties.
Hospital nurses form the largest group of nurses who work for staffing services. Another group consists of those who work in the office of a physician. Office nurses assist physicians in private practice, clinics, surgery centers, emergency medical centers, and health maintenance organizations (HMOs). They prepare patients for and assist with examinations, administer injections and medications, dress wounds and incisions, assist with minor surgery, and maintain records. Some also perform routine laboratory and office work.
There is opportunity for nurses who want to work as professional temps. Kelly Services and Olsten, two of the larger national staffing services, have developed divisions that work with health care professionals like nurses. There is a very competitive market, with staffing services competing for the skills of the competent nurse. But it also depends upon supply and demand.
For example, if you are a nurse and live in a city where several staffing services are advertising for your skills, you can probably work whenever you want to. On the other hand, if you live in an area where many nurses are being laid off, then there will not be as big a demand for your skills.
Nan was a registered nurse with experience in cardiac care. When she moved with her husband from one small town to a larger one, she decided to start a family and change her hours of work outside the home. Before her move, Nan had supervised the care of those who had heart surgery. She wanted to continue using her nursing skills, but did not want the responsibility of supervising others while her children were young.
The city where Nan moved had several staffing services that placed skilled nurses like herself on temporary assignments. Nan was able to find a job that allowed her to work the hours she wanted to as a nurse and earn competitive wages. The staffing service placed her in a variety of jobs, including hospitals, doctors' offices, and home healthcare.
Home health nurses can work as temps. Services set up nurses to go into people's homes and care for and instruct patients and their families. Home health nurses care for a broad range of patients, such as those recovering from illnesses and accidents, cancer, and child birth. They must be able to work independently. The same can be said for nurses who work in nursing homes.
Public health nurses work in government and private agencies and in clinics, schools, retirement communities, and other community settings as temporary workers. Don't forget: As the generation of baby boomers ages, the demand for healthcare will increase for the parents of baby boomers, the children of baby boomers, and for baby boomers themselves. The more demand there is for skills in health care, the more people are needed who can provide healthcare, creating many different opportunities for the professional technical temp with healthcare skills.
Nurse practitioners are also hired as temps, because they provide basic healthcare and in some states can prescribe medications. The professional technical temp who is a nurse practitioner may work with other healthcare temps who are nurse anesthetists and certified nurse midwives. There will always be a need for traditional hospital nurses, but a large number of new nurses who are professional technical temps will be employed in home health, long term, and ambulatory care.
Employment for temps in home health care is expected to grow quickly and staffing services will be recruiting nurses who want to use their professional skills to assist people with healthcare needs. More and more people will prefer to be cared for in their own home; therefore, staffing services will want to find the skills to meet these future demands.
Employment in nursing homes for temps is expected to grow much faster than average due to increases in the number of people in their eighties and nineties, many of whom will require long term care. In addition, the financial pressure on hospitals to release patients as soon as possible should produce more nursing home admissions. This is another opportunity for the professional technical temp who has the skills needed to staff nursing homes.
The use of temps in units to provide specialized long term rehabilitation for stroke and head injury patients or to care for and treat Alzheimer's victims will also increase steadily.
Current information available from the Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics states median weekly earnings for the middle 50% of full time salaried registered nurses are between $542 and $838. A University of Texas survey conducted in 1994 of hospitals found that the median annual salary for nurses based on a 40 hour week and excluding shift or area differentials was: head nurses $50,700, clinical nurse specialists $47,674, professional nurse practitioners $47,432, nurse anesthetists $37,444, and staff nurses $35,256.
Scientists
Those with scientific skills can also find work through staffing services today. In a recent story on scientist temps, the Washington Post told how Kelly Services has staffed the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee with temporary workers. Kelly Services has a niche some of the other national staffing services do not, because the Kelly Scientific Resources division places people who are scientists. The Washington Post's January 20, 1997, article discussed a "new breed of Kelly temp: the scientist for hire." The Oak Ridge National Laboratory's use of temps is part of a growing trend of corporations and governments treating science as a business. Research and laboratory experiments are being outsourced to staffing services.
Businesses believe that hiring staffing services like Kelly Services will allow them to save money by letting someone else do the hiring and supervising of scientist temps.
Kelly Scientific Resources has 15 offices and is expected to open 10 more in the near future. In the Washington Post article, Rolf Kleiner, vice president of Kelly Scientific Resources, said, "We offer everything from low level animal handler and glassware washer all the way up to the PhDs. They span the disciplines of chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, physics, geology, environmental science, you name it."
Manpower Inc. has joined with the American Institute of Physics to place physicist temps. The Washington Post said that On Assignment staffing service of Calabasas, California, is "the country's largest temp agency specializing only in scientists. On any given day, said chief executive officer H. Tom Buelter, more than 2500 On Assignment scientists are working across the country in more than 60 laboratories."
Some of the scientific skills searched for by various staffing services include research assistants, pharmaceutical technicians, pharmacists, biologists, bio-technologists, chemists, environmentalists, genetic engineers, laboratory assistants, and laboratory technicians.
The healthcare industry is closely tied to the scientific industry. Many of the jobs for scientists may also be advertised and recruited for by staffing services that recruit for healthcare providers. For example, pharmacists are hired by some companies that also recruit and hire nurses and lab technicians. People who have clinical trials experience have opportunities in the staffing industry, because so much of their work is likely to be project oriented. For example, if a company is trying to discover whether a certain type of drug is available, the company will call a staffing service like Maxwell Clinical Trials Support Services to send out professional technical temps to research what drugs are available relating to a certain topic.
