25 Oct Can Allied Health Professionals Do Perm Agency Work?
If you’re a health professional who isn’t a doctor, nurse, or dentist, you might wonder whether you can do agency work. Yes, you can! Any healthcare professional can work with agencies to provide temporary and fixed-basis (block booking) cover.
Perm work, or block booking, is more traditionally known as a fixed-term contract. This is when you agree to work with a company or institution for a set period. In the healthcare agency work industry, it’s called perm work, since it’s more permanent than being booked up to an hour before your shift starts. With “perm” work, you’ll know about all your shifts ahead of time.
What’s an Allied Healthcare Professional?
Allied health professionals are any sort of healthcare professional who aren’t doctors, nurses, or dentists. They provide diagnostic, preventive, therapeutic, and rehabilitative services Some examples include:
- Healthcare assistants (HCA)
- Care home managers
- Care workers
- Children’s home managers
- Physical therapists
- Psychologists
- Speech-language pathologists
- Social workers
Though these workers don’t handle the traditional blood and disease aspects of healthcare, they’re crucial to providing a holistic care experience and promoting health and wellness.
What Allied Healthcare Professionals Are Most Hired for Agency Work?
The allied healthcare professionals most hired by institutions through agencies are HCAs, care home managers, domiciliary care workers, and children’s home managers.
HCAs
Healthcare assistants, or HCAs, provide support to nurses. They help patients with personal care, monitor vital signs, communication, assist with ensuring all equipment is clean and cared for, and help maintain patient records. They are a crucial part of ensuring patient safety and comfort. HCAs usually work in the wards.
Domiciliary Care Workers
Domiciliary care workers provide essential support to people who may need assistance due to age, illness, disability, or other factors. Like HCAs, they help with personal care, monitor vital signs, emotional support, and ensure medication is taken. Usually, they work in people’s homes, and so also help with tasks like shopping, laundry, and ambulation.
Care Home Managers
Care home managers are essential in the daily operation and maintenance of excellent-quality residential facilities. They’re responsible for recruiting and training staff, coordinating care, administrative tasks, liaising with stakeholders (like laundry services or medical staff), their home’s finances, and maintaining relationships with residents’ families.
Children’s Homes Managers
Children’s home managers are a crucial part of ensuring children’s safety and well-being in residential care. They’re in charge of recruiting and training staff, creating individual care plans, ensuring regulatory compliance, aiming for outstanding service, and providing a safe and nurturing environment.
How to Find Agency Work as an Allied Healthcare Professional
Finding agency work is as easy as registering with an agency. If you’re not sure whether they place your profession, reach out and ask. Proximity Healthcare helps nurses, HCAs, care workers, domiciliary care workers, care home managers, children’s home managers, and many more healthcare professionals find agency work they love.
Shifts work exactly as they would for nurses, doctors, or dentists: on a rota basis. You would register with an agency like Proximity Healthcare, which would carefully consider your qualifications and experience, and then offer you shifts to replace managers who can’t make their shifts.
To get a “perm” job, you would need to sign a fixed-term contract or be booked for a block with the agency, usually for a few months. If the home likes you, they may offer you permanent employment at the end of your term. So, in a way, agency work can be a stepping stone to permanent employment. Note that the permanent employment would be independent of your agency.
Agency work offers much higher wages than the usual hourly staff rate, as agencies bridge the staff shortage gap. Since agency workers work on short notice, they’re compensated much more.
If you would like to do agency work as an allied health professional, contact Proximity Healthcare. We would love to help you find great agency work at a facility you love.