The NHS is nearly three-quarters of a century old, during which time it has established a global reputation for clinical excellence. The institution is also one of the world’s biggest employers, with approximately 1.4 million people working for the NHS as caregivers, nurses, doctors, consultants, managers, and support staff. Despite this, recent years have seen unprecedented inconsistencies in the supply of nursing staff, with Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic fuelling recruitment problems for many NHS Trusts.
The Pressure Cooker That's Driving A Recruitment Crisis
Demand for healthcare in the UK shows no signs of diminishing. With more people living longer and the aftereffects of the pandemic persisting, it is little surprise that over 7 million people are currently awaiting treatment for a complex range of health conditions. A report from the Health Foundation’s REAL Centre in 2021 revealed that, by the end of the decade, nearly half a million extra healthcare staff would be needed to meet demand, an increase of 40 per cent in the current workforce.
Yet even today the NHS is often described as a ‘pressure cooker’. With training for nursing taking three years, supply simply cannot meet demand, putting existing staff under enormous stress to provide high-quality patient care without detrimental effects on their own health and wellbeing.
So, what steps can you take if your NHS Trust or hospital department is facing a staffing crisis?
Alleviate The Pressure With Temporary Nurse Staffing
Vigilance is key to avoiding workplace burnout from affecting your team, but the excessive workload that many nurses face is likely to have a profound effect on their physical and mental health if left unchecked. For many nurses, their profession is a vocation, and they will willingly go above and beyond to ensure the highest standards of patient care, even in challenging circumstances. Monitoring your team’s workload and routinely communicating with each member of staff will help you to identify the challenges they face and devise workable solutions to alleviate the pressure.
If the workload is too high and staff or patient wellbeing is compromised, it may be prudent to hire nursing staff, even on a short-term basis from a reputable nursing temp agency.
Assess Your Options
When arranging temporary nurse staffing, it’s important that you source qualified and reliable workers from a trustworthy NHS-approved recruitment agency. It can be well-worth spending some time researching the options to ensure that you choose a provider who specialises in temporary medical and healthcare staffing solutions.
A suitable recruitment agency will have extensive industry experience and knowledge of the healthcare sector and will have a proven track record to supply high-quality nurses for NHS hospitals. Also, it is imperative that they have robust pre-vetting procedures so that there is no delay in supplying staff for your department.
Contact Us For Reliable Temporary Nurse Staffing Solutions
At Kingdom, we have a pool of qualified and dependable nurses who are pre-vetted and ready to commence assignments in any part of the healthcare sector. To find out more, please call our recruitment specialists.
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