How Urgent Care Staff Keep Healthcare Facilities Running

Urgent Care staff are vital personnel within various healthcare organisations, including hospitals and specialist healthcare facilities.

Positions of this kind – and, indeed, roles across the UK’s healthcare industry – are currently experiencing significant levels of understaffing. In 2022/23, the vacancy rate in workplaces across the UK stood at 3.4% overall.

By contrast, the NHS’s vacancy rate within the same year was 8.4% and the rate within the social care sector was 9.9% – almost three times higher than the overall rate.

This level of understaffing within vital departments such as Urgent Care can be very dangerous, with organisations in the health and care industries running the risk of severe delays in triage and treatment, putting patients in danger, causing serious compliance issues and placing employees in positions of significant stress.

In this article, the urgent staffing specialists at Cucumber Recruitment discuss the problems that high vacancy levels can cause and present some possible solutions.

Challenges Faced by Healthcare Facilities

The Urgent Care department in a healthcare facility is the first point of contact for paramedics and affected individuals when large-scale emergencies, natural disasters and large-scale disease outbreaks occur, resulting in patient surges.

Surges also occur at particular times of year – especially in winter. Short-handedness, whether caused by understaffing, strikes, illness or other issues, can render Urgent Care facilities unable to handle surges of this kind, resulting in dangerous backlogs that can have a serious knock-on effect on other departments.

The Role of Urgent Care Staff

The duties of specialists within the discipline of Urgent Care include assessing and triaging patients both remotely and in person, managing emergency admissions and referrals and providing suitable treatment where required and relevant.

They are often the first specialists who come into contact with individuals attending hospitals or other healthcare facilities with potentially serious issues. It is their job to make informed decisions about the next steps in treating and caring for those individuals.

How Quickly Can Urgent Care Staff be Provided?

The vital nature of personnel of this kind means that understaffing within an Urgent Care department can lead to a risk to patient safety. However, last-minute absences can and do occur, presenting issues that must be resolved as soon as possible.

By using urgent healthcare staffing specialists like those at Cucumber, gaps in a team can be filled almost immediately with highly trained personnel.

By ensuring that all background checks, certifications and training remain up to date at all times – and thanks to their large database of over 5000 healthcare professionals across the UK – Cucumber can connect organisations with their ideal candidates and see the onboarding process completed swiftly and efficiently.

What Training and Qualifications Do Urgent Care Staff Possess?

Cucumber can help to fill virtually any position within an Urgent Care department, whether an organisation is struggling with Urgent nurse staffing, the filling of operations management positions or a shortage of healthcare assistants.

As well as the qualifications already held by the specialists on our roster, Cucumber provides regular in-house training opportunities to enable staff to add to their skills. We offer courses that focus on:

● Safeguarding
● Person Centred Care
● Moving and Handling
● Mental Health
● Maybo (including conflict management)
● MCA (Mental Capacity Act) training, including guidance on DoLS (Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards)
● Health and Safety
● Infection Control
● End of Life Care
● Equality and Diversity
● Epilepsy
● Dignity and Respect
● Dementia
● Challenging Behaviour

This is by no means an exhaustive list – so if a position you are hoping to fill requires a specific type of training, please do get in touch to discuss this further, as it is highly likely that we will be able to assist you.

What Steps Can a Healthcare Facility Take to Prepare for Staff Shortages?

Personnel shortages can occur without warning and put Urgent Care departments in a very difficult position. To mitigate the risk of this happening within your organisation, get in touch with Cucumber Recruitment today.

By partnering with us, you will be implementing a highly effective healthcare staff shortage solution that will protect you from serious challenges further down the line. We will be able to help you locate the ideal candidates to fill any staffing gap with immediate effect, reducing the risk to patient safety and employee wellbeing and ensuring compliance to industry regulations.

How to Get Started

Whether you’re looking for a HCA or nurse shortage solution, or you just wish to learn a little more about the services available from Cucumber Recruitment a leading nursing agency, feel free to get in touch with us today.

Our friendly team will be more than happy to discuss matters with you, to provide advice and guidance and – if you require – to begin the process of searching for your perfect candidates.

Contact us today to make a start, or take a look at our urgent staffing page for more information.