Jefferson Health, a Philadelphia-based system with 32 hospitals, said Dec. 3 it will expand its Nursing SEAL Team program, which will soon grow to include 236 nurses who can be deployed across various settings.
In 2022, Jefferson, a then-18-hospital system, launched the initiative with 25 registered nurses. The SEAL Team, which stands for service, excellence, advocacy and leadership, is modeled after the Navy SEALs (Sea, Air and Land), who are special operations forces.
The SEAL nurses act as floating employees, as the system can send them to medical/surgical, telemetry, emergency, progressive care and intensive care units depending on that unit’s staffing needs. They can decide whether they want to work across multiple divisions, states or across the organization’s entire footprint.
The initiative began with deploying these nurses on a two-week basis, and it has evolved to up to a six-week assignment based on greater utilization of predictive data analytics.
As of Dec. 3, the system reduced its reliance on agency nurses by more than 75%, according to a news release from Jefferson Health.
Jefferson will introduce the initiative to its locations in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania in January, the release said.
