What did surprise me though was
the rise in Covid positive cases in Shetland. This group of islands lies some
110 miles from the Scottish mainland and is home to nearly 23,000 people (which
also surprised me). It is a place that in my most romantic moments (yes, I do
have them), I’ve thought would be a great place to live. In total there have
been 60 Covid positive cases there, including three new cases last Friday. I stumbled
across this information and in my follow-up came across the very informative online
Shetland News. If you have a spare 30 minutes or so, have a look. It’s a very different
but delightful world up there. But even on an island in the middle of the North
Atlantic, Covid19 is to be found.
I once had a student who lived
and worked on the island. He was a nurse undertaking a distance learning degree
in leadership. Each student had to attend for one day at the start and end of each
module. He never missed once, despite the journey being long, and at times arduous.
I wondered what he was doing now, as I was reading an article in the Nursing
Times about funding being made available to ‘accelerate’ the recruitment of
overseas nurses. Rather like the ‘Windrush’ generation, who travelled to the UK
from Barbados and Jamaica in the early 1950s, the NHS is once again recruiting
nurses from overseas countries, notably India this time around.
Whilst the NHS People Plan clearly
acknowledged a continuing commitment to international recruitment of nurses, the
Covid pandemic almost completely stopped many growing overseas recruitment programmes.
Indeed, as I write this blog, there are over 6,500 international nurses who
have been recruited to come to England, who have not been able to travel to the UK. Despite what you might read in the papers,
apparently these problems are easing, and the Government have made funds available
to pay for flights, support during quarantine periods, accommodation and
training so these nurses can become UK registered nurses, and goodness do we
need them. The National Audit Office notes that currently there are some 44,000
nursing vacancies across the UK.
In recognising this huge vacancy challenge,
PM Johnson promised the NHS would recruit 50,000 new nurses by 2025. It’s an
ambitious target for sure. However, simply recruiting from overseas is not a
sustainable approach to solving the nursing shortages. It is also not always
ethical. We should not be recruiting international nurse at the expense of
health services in their own country. At one of the Trusts in which I have a
NED role, we have long run a ‘Learn, Earn and Return’ approach to recruiting
overseas doctors, something extended to nurse recruitment. Everyone wins.
Closer to home, universities have
seen a 22% increase in students of students on nursing degree programmes, which
represents an additional 5,000 nurses commencing their training than in
2019. It’s a promising start. Perhaps combining overseas recruitment, apprenticeship
schemes, and increased nursing degree students, there is a chance in the medium
term, to get the much-needed numbers of nurses working in the NHS. Time will tell,
but personally, I think, I wouldn’t hold your breath.
All we need to do now is keep the
nurses we have, and reduce the numbers of nurses leaving the profession. The
Kings Fund, in a three year study found that 28% of newly qualified nurses leave
the profession within 36 months of completing their pre-registration education and
training. It is perhaps easy to see why. In most places the norm for many
nurses are still 12 hour shifts. Pandemic working, with the donning and doffing
of PPE will have accentuated the impact of working such long and unsocial hours.
As the numbers of Covid patients
being admitted into hospitals have decreased (but watch this space as unfortunately
the numbers will begin to grow again in the very near future), some of the
measures put in place for staff have been discontinued. I call this the post-free
carparking era. For example, in the last 6 months staff have been able to park,
free of charge without any problem. The last few weeks have seen the return of visitors
to car parks and the re-introduction of car parking charges for staff. Now, trying
to find a car parking space can be that singularly unlooked for and unwanted stress
at the start of a long shift.
There is much more that needs to
be done to sustain and support our health and social care workforce. Organisations
need to keep in place those pandemic support systems. As a people service, we
should spend as much time looking after our people as we do looking after those
who need our help and care. This was a topic that formed part of a conversation
I had with a friend and colleague, Andrew Foster.
Last week we met up for a socially-distanced
drink, beside a slow-moving river and a fast-moving M6 motorway. Andrew had led
on the recruitment of the doctors and nurses who volunteered to return to the NHS
at the start of the pandemic. Some 45,000 people responded. 13,000 were nurses.
6,000 went on to gain their right to register as a practising nurse. He talked
of an idea that caught my attention, but it was one that apparently didn’t get
off the starting blocks – a reserve nursing workforce – something akin to the Territorial
Army reservists. In the continuing battle against Covid19, this seems to me to
be an inspired idea, and like the ‘learn, earn and return’ approach, a ‘win win’
for everyone. I hope that Ruth May, who has been known to read this blog, doesn’t
find this idea a complete surprise.
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