Float Nurses Protocal in Medical Offices/ Float Nurse Team Collaboration - Research Paper Example

Methodology: A quasi-experimental design has been chosen as the design for this study. The study proposes recruiting ten float nurses from ten different medical office settings with less than six months experience as float nurses. Data will be collected through questionnaires. The questionnaires will be applied prior to and after the application of the float induction protocol. An appropriate statistical package will be applied to the data collected to provide the results of the study. Pozgar and Santucci 2007, p.

202, describe a float nurse as “a health-care professional who rotates from unit to unit based on staffing needs”. A group of float nurses or a pod of float nurses has become the means of meeting the shortage of nurses and reducing the strain on nursing staff. It is in this aspect that float nurses are looked upon as a benefit in nursing care. However, float nurses can also be a liability particularly, when they function in unfamiliar areas of nursing without adequate support and guidance (Pozgar & Santucci, 2007).

It is the liability that float nurses pose that has led to opposition to the use of float nursing pods by some nursing professionals. This opposition is unjustified when we take into consideration the consequences of doing away with the practice of float nurses particularly in these times of shortage of nurses (Kane-Urabazzo, 2006). The need to retain the concept of float nurses and float nursing pods to augment nursing is evident, but for efficient use of this concept the benefits they provide need to be utilized, while minimizing the liabilities they pose.

Usually the liabilities from float nurses arise from their being not sure of the technical aspects of nursing in the new environment of their posting and the lack of support they perceive they will receive in this new environment