In my younger days, I like most people saw recruitment in fairly traditional terms. We placed an advertisement in the local newspaper or health related journal, waited with baited breath for the applications to come in, shortlisted the lucky few, did a round of interviews, made the offer, agreed a start-date … repeat.
While this system worked at the time, things are changing for the better.
My wife is a nurse, and that means of course our social life is full of other nurses, who worked or trained with my wife over the years. My wife took the then traditional route into the profession, starting her training at 17 and going on to do a specialist nursing degree some years after she qualified.
I’ve always been impressed though by the diversity of backgrounds and routes into training that her friends have taken. These include really talented people who undertook nurse training after working as a care assistant: they came into the profession slightly later in life than my wife, and brought to their studies a real insight into the requirements of providing care to patients and their families, as well as of course that bit more life experience. My wife and her friends are not unusual. I know by talking to colleagues across the country that they are recruiting staff in a variety of innovative ways. Take for example Peterborough and Stamford hospitals who are working with the Open University to deliver a programme to support healthcare assistants to undertake a pre-registration nursing degree or Lewisham and Greenwich NHS who have spent the last few years developing and implementing initiatives to recruit and retain their health visitor workforce.
It was really encouraging to hear national support for initiatives like these. Lord Willis as part of the Shape of Caring review recently described with passion and clarity the need to ensure that diverse entry routes are maintained and even better expanded for the nursing and midwifery workforce.
I know that diversifying entry routes doesn’t come without its problems and for me, there are still too many hurdles for those who want to enter the profession via a different route.
Some of the solutions seem clear. For example, accreditation of prior learning and mutual recognition of common qualifications between educational institutions would be a great step forward.
It isn’t all about just growing and nurturing from within. The NHS is often the largest employer in a local community and can play a key part in a local economy. The wide range of careers within the NHS (both clinical and non-clinical) provide an array of opportunities for people at all levels of experience and academic ability. Keeping open a range of entry routes is the only way that we can recruit a workforce that starts to be truly representative of the communities that we serve. In recent years there has been a massive growth in apprenticeships in the NHS and this has in my experience, and I know the experience of many others, been a fantastic way of helping young people into our workforce.
Other schemes working with Jobcentre Plus, the Prince’s Trust, Project Search, and the Inspiring the Future programme that links local schools with employers, are all supplementing efforts by local employers to create a more diverse workforce. Project Search in particular has been one of the finest and most personally rewarding approaches I have experienced. In my previous life in Nottingham we worked with Foxwood School to provide placements for young people with learning needs in our workforce. Some fantastic colleagues joined us as a result, and it was humbling to see the difference we were able to make to their life chances but also the effectiveness of our organisation.
We should be proud of the work that we are doing to widen the access routes into the NHS, in many cases we are leading the way, but there is still much, much more to do.
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