12.02.16
New campaign urges nurses to join trust staff banks
Nurses are being urged to join their local trust’s in-house nursing bank as part of a new NHS Professionals (NHSP) campaign.
Launched in an effort to reduce the NHS’s dependence on agencies, the ‘Love the NHS – Return to the Bank’ campaign is running in NHSP’s 60-plus client trusts until mid-March. It aims to persuade nurses who are employed by their trust, or who have recently left nursing to retire or raise families, to join their local bank, allowing them to work on a flexible basis.
The campaign is designed to help trusts fill shifts through their in-house bank and use agencies as a last resort.
Angela Thompson, director of nursing at East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, said: “We are encouraging nurses to join the in-house bank run by NHS Professionals, as it supports the trust.
“It means that our patients get great care from staff who know the trust, while the staff can reap the benefits of flexible working. For those who want to return to the trust but only want to work a few shifts, the bank provides the perfect opportunity and we’d very much welcome back staff who want to work in the Trust.”
NHS Professionals is owned by the Department of Health and manages temporary staff banks on behalf of 62 NHS trusts, with a bank of over 60,000 nurses in total.
In November Monitor and the NHS Trust capped the hourly rates for agency staff in a bid to limit NHS spending on trusts, which contributed to a £1.6bn half-year deficit in the NHS. Last week the NAO criticised the NHS for badly managing its supply of clinical staff, leading to a 5.9% staffing shortfall in 2014.
In the Jan/Feb edition of NHE, Stockport NHS Foundation Trust’s deputy director of nursing, Tyrone Roberts said that Stockport had reduced their dependence on agencies by improving their relationship with banks, including increasing pay rates by 96%.