Nurses with YNHHS’ new Patient Service Operations Center include, back row (l-r): Tiffany Shea, RN, Katie Giunta, RN, Dian Chen, RN, and Jalicia Brown, RN. Front row (l-r) are: Janet Marseglia, RN, director of Supplemental Staffing, Maggie Guerrero, RN, and Kemi Ogunmola, RN.
Center provides a traveling nurse experience — without the travel
When Tiffany Shea, RN, learned about Yale New Haven Health’s new System Patient Service Operations Center (PSOC), she was the first to join. Now she’s helping to recruit more YNHHS nurses for the center, which launched a year ago to provide coverage for unit-based nurses at Bridgeport, Greenwich and Yale New Haven hospitals who are out on longer-term leaves of absence.
The PSOC does not replace local nursing resource centers at each delivery network. Resource center nurses “float” to different units throughout their respective hospitals for mostly short-term assignments, such as covering for unit-based staff on PTO.
The PSOC is designed to reduce the hospitals’ reliance on “traveling nurses,” who are employed by outside agencies and hired to cover mostly long-term staffing gaps. Each year, YNHHS contracts with a large number of traveling nurses, who tend to cost more and come with different job experiences, said Janet Marseglia, RN, director of Supplemental Staffing.
“Traveling nurses are well qualified, and they go through a brief orientation, but Yale New Haven Health-trained nurses know our values, standards of professional behavior and best practices such as our HRO safety behaviors,” she said.
Shea, who worked at Yale New Haven Hospital for 12 years before joining the PSOC, said she appreciates the opportunity to work on a variety of units at different YNHHS hospitals, while retaining her seniority and benefits as a system employee. She recently completed an assignment on the Verdi 5 West Medicine unit at YNHH’s Saint Raphael Campus and is now on assignment at Bridgeport Hospital.
“You gain so much knowledge and experience in this role,” she said. “For anyone who has ever wanted to be a travel nurse, but doesn’t want to work outside Connecticut, this is the best opportunity in the world.”
Recently, many of Yale New Haven Hospital’s per-diem staff joined the PSOC, which will help units that are experiencing fluctuations in workload and patient acuity.
“We’ve had nurses join the PSOC because they wanted to do something different,” Marseglia said. “Our nurses will grow out of the organization if they can’t grow within it. This is a way to keep talented people in our health system, taking care of our patients.”
