Recruitment Resources

In an exceptionally challenging  labour market for healthcare workers, Leeds Community
Healthcare NHS Trust recruited over 100 local people for local jobs, reaching deep into communities to tap into a diverse talent pool and tackle unemployment. The trust innovated new ways to recruit, engaging with local people to overcome barriers in the
recruitment process.

Have you ever asked yourself why you wanted to be a community nurse in the first place? Perhaps you were interested in health promotion, or children’s services. Maybe it was the lack of shift work and an improved work–life balance, or simply the variety of patients in the
community. Whatever your reasons, it seems that less and less of your colleagues feel the same way, with community nurse attrition rates on the rise, and the numbers of retirees not being replaced by new registrants.

The Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) has recently launched a new project to support recruitment of internationally trained registered nurses to community service providers in England, in line with the the overall national strategy to fill nursing vacancies and secure a sustainable workforce (www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/We-Are-The-NHS-Action-For-All-Of- Us-FINAL-March-21.pdf).
This work is supported by NHS England and Improvement and dovetails with the work they are undertaking to support six pilot sites around the country with their international recruitment to the community efforts (www.england.nhs.uk/nursingmidwifery/international-recruitment/). The QNI project is not limited to the pilot sites and may be of relevance to any organisation that employs registered nurses in the community. 
While the QNI does not employ nurses in a clinical capacity and is not in a position to support individual nurses who are applying from overseas, we hope that the information and learning from this project will make the process of coming to work in England smoother for employers, managers and overseas applicants alike.

This month Hallam Medical, the nursing recruitment agency, celebrates its tenth anniversary, and over that time we have placed a lot of nurses in exciting new roles as well as developing our commitment to nurse education. During this period, there have also been a lot of changes in the wider NHS as well as in the world of community nursing. But, as we work in an ever-evolving environment, what changes can we expect in the future and, more importantly, are we actually ready for them?

Having co-founded Hallam Medical I have to say the past ten years have flown by, but despite it only being a decade, an awful lot has changed, in primary care in particular. Not only have the health needs of the general population altered significantly — witness the major growth in chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity for example — but the nursing profession as a whole has had to change, evolve and adapt to meet these new challenges.

With many hospitals struggling to meet safe staffing quotas, it is often the support of agency nurses that keep hospital wards and community services open and running. But what of the agencies supplying them? Here the JCN profiles Hallam Medical, one of the UK's premier primary care recruitment agencies.

Alex Munro is a registered nurse, with a background in unscheduled care as a nurse practitioner. He has previously been a director of a private healthcare provider delivering a community admission avoidance service and is the co-founder and clinical director of Hallam Medical, the primary care recruitment specialist.