Most of Nursing Agencies will require you to have at least 6 months experience in a single place of work. You need to have enough confidence in your skills before starting to work for an agency because at each shift you are going in a completely new environment and you need to find quickly your way around to be able to do the job in a safely manner.

When you first arrive to the allocated shift, the agency nurse should make herself known and show their identity card to the Senior Nurse in the practice area and familiarize themselves immediately on commencing their shift with:

·         Bleep Systems – Fast Call/ Cardiac Arrest/ Fire

·         Complaints Handling/ Major Incident/ Alerts

·         Fire and Evacuation Procedures

·         Health and Safety Policies

·         Incident Reporting

·         Local Policies and Procedures – Medicines, Break times etc.

·         Location of Emergency Equipment

·         Ward routine and area of responsibility

Should the Nurse have any doubts or concerns at any point in their shift they should immediately discuss them with a senior member of the team. Regardless of the situation Nurses are to make the care of patients their priority and so having flagged any concerns they should commence their work to the best of their ability.

Nurses are to ensure all their documentation is completed as per organisation protocol by the end of their shift.

Nurses must ensure that their timesheet is filled in correctly for each shift, otherwise they risk to be not paid or have severe delay in receiving their money. Some agency may incur an admin charge for the time spent chasing up the correctitude of the timesheet if it is not completed correctly from the beginning.