Hiring A Private Nurse Vs. An Agency Nurse For Assisted Living

When most people think about hiring a nurse for an assisted living position, they think of hiring a nurse who is not currently employed elsewhere, or a nurse who is contracted by an agency to work for others. If you are looking for an assisted living nurse, you could hire either of these. Here are some pros and cons to hiring a private nurse, and how to ensure that your residents get the best care possible.

Private Nurses

Private nurses generally work for themselves. They write their own contracts and often create their own requirements for hiring. This makes them more expensive, but the best private nurses are worth the price because they are very good at what they do and a string of very happy and satisfied patients proves it. Private nurses will also have quite a list of references who will all say that their experiences with their one-on-one care have been worth the extra expense. However, you will have to perform your own background checks on private nurses because they do not come "pre-checked."

In addition to the level of care provided, private nurses provide more privacy and more individualized care. This means that they take each patient's needs and requirements, no matter how unusual, into consideration and follow the rules of the house carefully. Your residents can choose to have a private nurse, who will either reside in the apartments with them, or arrive early in the morning and stay until after supper and/or bathing. As an added courtesy, you could screen and hire the private nurses for these residents, which would reduce the burden on the residents to find their own nurses.

Agency Nurses

Agency nurses are already contracted to work whatever shifts and places become available. They are licensed, registered and certified, depending on their credentials. Their agencies have already performed all the necessary background checks and screened the nurses before hiring them. The only things you have to do is sign on to be a client of the agencies, forward a list of the assisted nursing and assisted care needs for the facility, nurses you want and need to fill your current openings, and send payment to the agencies at the end of every week for the nurses who have worked in your facility. Consistency in staff exists, although consistency in the level of care and the levels of nurses varies quite a bit.