When was the last time your nurse managers had bandwidth to focus on retention strategies, quality initiatives, or staff development without being buried in candidate phone screens?
If you are like most CNOs and nursing directors we talk to, the answer is probably "not recently enough."
Here is the challenge you are facing: Your managers are spending hours each week on Contingent Labor Candidate processing that pull them away from the leadership work that moves the needle on your organization's most critical metrics; retention, quality outcomes, and unit performance.
The Leadership Capacity Crisis You Cannot Afford
This is not just about inconvenience.
When your managers spend hours per week conducting phone screens, chasing down candidates, and interviewing people who turn out to be poor fits, you are not just wasting their time. You are losing their leadership capacity.
Those are hours they could have spent on:
- Developing and executing retention programs that reduce your reliance on contingent labor
- Building unit cultures that attract and keep top talent
- Driving quality improvement initiatives that impact patient outcomes
Every hour spent reviewing resumes and playing phone-tag with potential candidates is an hour not spent on strategic leadership. And you cannot afford that trade-off.
The Real Numbers Behind "Just Reviewing Candidates”
Here is what most executives do not realize: The problem is bigger than the time spent. It is about how much of that time spent is completely preventable.
Our clinical screening team conducts 1:1 nurse-to-nurse phone interviews with every candidate before they reach facility managers. The data tells a striking story: In 2025 alone, we reviewed 16,104 candidates, and 35% had fundamental issues that could have been identified in that first real conversation between two nurses.
That's over 5,600 candidates who looked perfect on paper but:
- Do not want the position once detailed expectations are relayed
- Will not float, despite floating being a core requirement
- Have exaggerated or misrepresented their actual clinical experience
We are talking about more than one in three submissions. Now think about every open position you are trying to fill across your organization. That is a massive drain on your leadership team's time and energy.
A Different Operating Model: Clinical Screening as Strategic Framework
The solution is not about adding more vendors or asking your managers to work harder. It is fundamentally rethinking how clinical screening should work in your organization.
Real clinical screening means having experienced RNs conduct thorough interviews that explore current clinical competencies, regardless of how they are marked on the checklist, and determine if a candidate meets the behavioral expectations of the department. It is about understanding what each unit needs, not just what the job description says, but what really makes someone successful in that particular environment.
Most importantly, it means protecting your managers' time by ensuring that only truly qualified, genuinely interested candidates ever reach their desk.
What This Actually Looks Like at Scale
Let us look at a recent example. One health system came to us needing to fill approximately 250 seasonal positions across five hospitals in a three-month timeframe. Not a single manager had to review a resume.
This was not because standards were lowered. It was because the clinical screening intake was so thorough that our team knew exactly what each unit needed and could match candidates accurately from the start.
That is 250 positions where managers did not spend hours on phone screens that went nowhere. Instead, those managers spent their time leading their teams, addressing staffing challenges proactively, and focusing on the work that impacts patient care. Interestingly, this health system is also known for their high traveler extension rates; a testament to the culture their leaders have time to build.
The Quality Assurance Component
Every CNO asks the right question: "How do you ensure quality?"
The answer is honest: You cannot guarantee perfect outcomes. Even the most thorough clinical interview cannot predict every behavioral issue that might arise once someone is in the environment.
What you can implement is best-practice clinical screening that dramatically reduces preventable quality issues:
- Nurse-to-nurse interviews that go beyond skills checklists
- Open ended scenario questions that reveal clinical competency
- Cultural fit evaluation based on detailed unit intake
- Focused discussions relevant to current challenges reviewed by a Quality Assurance Team
This approach does not eliminate every problem, but it creates a systematic process for preventing the most common quality issues: candidates who did not understand the role, did not possess required experience, or were not truly interested in the first place.
What Nursing Executives Are Saying
When we talk to nursing executives about what changed after implementing comprehensive clinical screening, the conversation rarely starts with fill rates or cost savings, though both typically improve significantly.
It starts with manager capacity.
One system's leadership team told us: "It was easy to get buy-in from the managers because we are taking something off their plate."
Another CNO shared: "The quality of candidates has been excellent, and we have more candidates to choose from. But the real win is seeing our managers finally have time to focus on their teams."
That is the real indicator of success: managers who can lead instead of just reacting.
The Strategic Imperative
Here is the bottom line: Your managers are among your most valuable leadership assets. Every hour they spend on administrative screening tasks is an hour they cannot spend on the strategic work that drives organizational performance.
Can you afford to have your leadership team functioning as administrative coordinators? The market is too competitive, the quality expectations are too high, and the workforce challenges are too complex.
Clinical screening done right is not a nice-to-have. It is strategic framework that enables everything else you are trying to accomplish with your workforce strategy.
The question is not whether your organization needs this capability. The question is how much longer you can afford to operate without it.
Next Steps
If you are ready to explore what strategic clinical screening could mean for your organization, let us start a conversation about your current challenges and priorities.
Because the best time to build strategic infrastructure is before you desperately need it. Your managers have the potential to be strategic leaders. Let us give them the capacity to prove it.