Find nurses available for urgent shifts
In any care facility, there is always a chance that, a few hours before a shift starts, a nurse will report an unexpected absence. At that point a race against the clock begins to find staff, still based on phone calls, improvisation and a heavy operational toll.
What happens when there is a last minute absence
An unexpected absence affects continuity of care, day to day operations and the wellbeing of the staff themselves.
When the team is told that a nurse will not be able to come in for a shift, whether because of sudden illness, family reasons or any other emergency, several effects kick in almost automatically:
- Internal operations are interrupted
The supervisor, HR or the person in charge of each facility has to stop what they are doing to deal with an urgent need that cannot wait. This delays key tasks for the day or creates a knock-on effect on other departments.
- Overload on the team on duty
While cover is being sought, the staff on duty start to absorb part of the work, increasing care pressure and the risk of errors. Workloads shoot up and the experience of the patient or resident can be compromised.
- Improvisation and organisational stress
The traditional process creates constant interruptions, calls outside working hours and emotional strain for whoever coordinates the cover. The urgency forces people to “make do with whoever is around”, even without any certainty that the available profile is the right one.
Traditional methods: useful, but not enough for today's needs
Despite being widely used, the classic ways of covering urgent shifts have significant limitations. Most care facilities still rely on three main routes:
1. Calling internal staff
The first step is usually to contact professionals on the payroll who are off duty or who have already covered other shifts.
- Low availability at critical times (holidays, weekends, nights)
- Risk of overloading the team and increasing turnover
- No way to protect the right to disconnect
2. Contacting temping agencies or external suppliers
Although they are quick, there are not always enough profiles available or adequate traceability.
- Slow administrative processes
- High costs
- Little visibility of the assigned professional's track record
- Lack of flexibility for needs that change every day
3. Improvised messages in the team's WhatsApp groups
A very common practice when time is short.
- Scattered information that is hard to record.
- The right to disconnect is broken.
- No guarantee about who can or cannot take the shift.
- No traceability or control over profiles, experience or certifications.
Conclusion: these strategies can work at certain moments, but they do not provide a stable, scalable or safe system for a facility that needs to cover urgent shifts on a regular basis.
How Livo changes a facility's day to day
How can a model that combines external shifts and technology transform the response to these staffing emergencies?
What used to be an improvised emergency (calls, chats, spreadsheets) becomes a fast, traceable and controlled process.
Having a pool of verified professionals available across different time slots makes it possible to respond quickly without overloading permanent staff. Care facilities can cover shifts immediately with qualified, previously validated profiles, maintaining continuity of care.
Livo gives access to a network of more than 55,000 professionals, ensuring speed, safety and stability in the service. Facilities no longer depend solely on their internal team.
Facilities can filter by speciality, experience and type of unit (ICU, inpatient wards, mental health, emergency care, geriatrics and so on), moving from “let's see who can come in” to “who fits this shift best”. Every professional goes through a prior validation process (identity, qualifications, experience), so any profile that gets to request shifts has already been checked by the Livo team.
From a single platform, the nursing supervision or management team handles the whole flow: shifts published, applications received, filtered profiles and later evaluations.
- Fewer interruptions and more time for critical tasks: fewer improvised calls and chats.
- More stable continuity of care: less dependence on internal availability and less pressure on teams.
- Faster cover: access to available profiles within minutes.
- Confidence in every external professional: validated healthcare staff and fewer risks in urgent hiring.
- A better experience for professionals and for the organisation: clear processes, without improvisation, that make external nurses want to work with the same facility again.
Last minute absences will not disappear, but the way they are managed can change radically. For care facilities, having a network of available professionals and a platform that centralises the management of urgent shifts makes it possible to act quickly, safeguard continuity of care, protect the internal team and avoid improvisation.