Homegrown Nurses
27 August 2015
The head of resourcing at an NHS Trust, which in the last 12 months recruited almost three-quarters of its nursing intake from abroad, has told Recruiter that she expects to reduce its reliance on overseas nurses in the coming years.
Thu, 27 Aug 2015
Recruiter.co.uk recently reported that since August 2014, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) recruited 301 nurses from abroad, compared to only 125 from the UK. In July, the trust’s chief executive Dr Keith McNeil told the BBC that it was “distracting, frustrating and expensive to do international recruitment” and better planning was needed to raise the number of homegrown nurses.
Julie Chapman, CUH’s head of resourcing, told Recruiter that measures were now in place at the trust that should ensure the trust didn’t need to recruit nurses outside the UK in the same numbers. “We are in a very different place now,” she said.
Chapman highlighted the importance of onboarding. Not only did her team keep in touch with new foreign recruits before they started, said Chapman, but the trust also provided mentors, put on welcoming events, and helped with rent and accommodation, as well as language training.
Chapman said that retention has been strong. Only two nurses recruited from Europe had returned home. “It doesn’t appear there is any doubt that people want to stay for the longer term,” she said.
The trust also received funding for 20 healthcare assistants to take a university degree in nursing, while more new nurses were beginning coming through on university placements, with 70 newly-qualified nurses starting at the trust this year.
Taken together with university recruitment drives, and advertising in the media, these measures would reduce the trust’s reliance on recruiting nurses from abroad. However, Chapman said that the situation remained far from satisfactory, and she highlighted the ongoing difficulty of finding sufficient qualified nurses from within the UK with three or four years’ experience.”
COLLIN COTTELL
FROM SEPTEMBER 2015'S RECRUITER MAGAZINE
The head of resourcing at an NHS Trust, which in the last 12 months recruited almost three-quarters of its nursing intake from abroad, has told Recruiter that she expects to reduce its reliance on overseas nurses in the coming years.Recruiter.co.uk recently reported that since August 2014, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) recruited 301 nurses from abroad, compared to only 125 from the UK. In July, the trust’s chief executive Dr Keith McNeil told the BBC that it was “distracting, frustrating and expensive to do international recruitment” and better planning was needed to raise the number of homegrown nurses.
Julie Chapman, CUH’s head of resourcing, told Recruiter that measures were now in place at the trust that should ensure the trust didn’t need to recruit nurses outside the UK in the same numbers. “We are in a very different place now,” she said.
Chapman highlighted the importance of onboarding. Not only did her team keep in touch with new foreign recruits before they started, said Chapman, but the trust also provided mentors, put on welcoming events, and helped with rent and accommodation, as well as language training.
Chapman said that retention has been strong. Only two nurses recruited from Europe had returned home. “It doesn’t appear there is any doubt that people want to stay for the longer term,” she said.
The trust also received funding for 20 healthcare assistants to take a university degree in nursing, while more new nurses were beginning coming through on university placements, with 70 newly-qualified nurses starting at the trust this year.
Taken together with university recruitment drives, and advertising in the media, these measures would reduce the trust’s reliance on recruiting nurses from abroad. However, Chapman said that the situation remained far from satisfactory, and she highlighted the ongoing difficulty of finding sufficient qualified nurses from within the UK with three or four years’ experience.”
COLLIN COTTELL
