NEWS
RETURN-TO-PRACTICE CAMPAIGN WILL TURN NICE TO ADDRESS ITS ATTENTION TO BOOSTING RETENTION SAFE EMERGENCY More than 1,500 former nurses have decided to rejoin the profession over the past nine months as part of Health Education England’s £4.7 million ‘Come Back’ campaign. The three-year campaign, launched at the end of September last year, is designed to boost nurse staffing in the short term. Health Education England (HEE) nursing director Lisa Bayliss-Pratt said: ‘We already have 1,504 people on return programmes. ‘We have increased training commissions year on year but we know those students will not be in the workplace until three years’ time, so this campaign is addressing short-term supply. Based on the 1,504 people who have returned in the past nine months, it feels like there could be a lot more out there.’
Nurses whose registration is lapsed undertake a 12-week course to refresh their knowledge and skills. The £2,000 course fees are paid by HEE. Dr Bayliss-Pratt said HEE will work with the returning nurses to identify ways to boost retention. ‘We want to help them network and find out what it is like to come back into nursing, what we can do to help them stay in nursing and what we could have done to stop them leaving in the first place,’ she said. As part of the campaign, HEE will work with the Nursing and Midwifery Council to contact nurse registrants who are not currently practising and whose registration is about to lapse, and encourage them back into the profession using a short ‘refresher’ course or preceptorship route.
NURSE STAFFING
Safe staffing recommendations for emergency departments will be published shortly by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence. NICE decided to publish its work – which is not official guidance – despite shelving work on safe staffing guidelines in other areas, following NS England being given this responsibiity. NICE’s decision to abandon the work was met with dismay by nursing leaders, who warned it was a ‘backwards step’. At RCN congress in Bournemouth, 99% of nurses backed a resolution calling for the decision to be reversed. A spokesperson for NICE said: ‘The information that would have been contained in the official draft of the NICE safe staffing guidance will be available on the website but not as formal guidance. ‘This is in the interests of transparency and to assist others looking for information on safe staffing.’
‘Migration policy could pose risk to NHS pay’ Organisations that employ nurses must not be able to use new migration rules to undermine the salaries of British and European nurses, said the RCN. The college said changes to the minimum salary thresholds for nurses recruited from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) must not undermine the Agenda for Change (AfC) pay scales. The college was responding to the government’s migration advisory committee’s consultation on the viability of plans to increase the various levels of tier 2 minimum salary thresholds. Tier 2 visas are the primary route for UK economic immigration. RCN head of policy Howard Catton said: ‘We do not want AfC to be undermined in any way by changes to the immigration rules or salary threshold levels.’
The RCN argues against raising the current minimum salary threshold of £21,478 for non-EEA nurses. The starting salary of a band 5 nurse is £21,692.
‘AfC MUST NOT BE UNDERMINED BY IMMIGRATION RULES’ –Howard Catton
‘The minimum threshold should therefore continue to be linked to band 5 within AfC to ensure that employers are able to recruit nurses to address shortterm shortages and to avoid migrants undercutting the resident labour force’, the RCN states in its submission. NHS Employers echoed the RCN’s call to protect AfC for the recruitment of overseas nurses in its submission.
It expressed concerns with the current points-based system citing how, at a June 2015 allocation panel, a minimum of 50 points was required to gain a certificate of sponsorship for entry to the UK. ‘This would have required a nurse, cardiac physiologist, radiographer or doctor in training to have had a salary in excess of £50,000,’ the organisation said. Yet for UK nurses, the entry level to band 5 provides a salary of £21,692 and 33 points. Under Home Office proposals, from April 2016, most tier 2 visa immigrants from outside the EEA must earn more than £35,000 to qualify for permanent UK residence. NHS Employers highlights the damage this might cause to an employer that has 40 theatre nurses from outside the EEA earning under £35,000. ‘Theatre nursing has long-standing recruitment and retention issues,’ it says.
8 july 15 :: vol 29 no RCNi.com 46 :: 2015by ${individualUser.displayName} on Nov 26, 2015. For personal use only. NoNURSING STANDARD Downloaded from other uses without permission. Copyright © 2015 RCNi Ltd. All rights reserved.
RETURN-TO-PRACTICE CAMPAIGN WILL TURN NICE TO ADDRESS ITS ATTENTION TO BOOSTING RETENTION SAFE EMERGENCY More than 1,500 former nurses have decided to rejoin the profession over the past nine months as part of Health Education England’s £4.7 million ‘Come Back’ campaign. The three-year campaign, launched at the end of September last year, is designed to boost nurse staffing in the short term. Health Education England (HEE) nursing director Lisa Bayliss-Pratt said: ‘We already have 1,504 people on return programmes. ‘We have increased training commissions year on year but we know those students will not be in the workplace until three years’ time, so this campaign is addressing short-term supply. Based on the 1,504 people who have returned in the past nine months, it feels like there could be a lot more out there.’
Nurses whose registration is lapsed undertake a 12-week course to refresh their knowledge and skills. The £2,000 course fees are paid by HEE. Dr Bayliss-Pratt said HEE will work with the returning nurses to identify ways to boost retention. ‘We want to help them network and find out what it is like to come back into nursing, what we can do to help them stay in nursing and what we could have done to stop them leaving in the first place,’ she said. As part of the campaign, HEE will work with the Nursing and Midwifery Council to contact nurse registrants who are not currently practising and whose registration is about to lapse, and encourage them back into the profession using a short ‘refresher’ course or preceptorship route.
NURSE STAFFING
Safe staffing recommendations for emergency departments will be published shortly by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence. NICE decided to publish its work – which is not official guidance – despite shelving work on safe staffing guidelines in other areas, following NS England being given this responsibiity. NICE’s decision to abandon the work was met with dismay by nursing leaders, who warned it was a ‘backwards step’. At RCN congress in Bournemouth, 99% of nurses backed a resolution calling for the decision to be reversed. A spokesperson for NICE said: ‘The information that would have been contained in the official draft of the NICE safe staffing guidance will be available on the website but not as formal guidance. ‘This is in the interests of transparency and to assist others looking for information on safe staffing.’
‘Migration policy could pose risk to NHS pay’ Organisations that employ nurses must not be able to use new migration rules to undermine the salaries of British and European nurses, said the RCN. The college said changes to the minimum salary thresholds for nurses recruited from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) must not undermine the Agenda for Change (AfC) pay scales. The college was responding to the government’s migration advisory committee’s consultation on the viability of plans to increase the various levels of tier 2 minimum salary thresholds. Tier 2 visas are the primary route for UK economic immigration. RCN head of policy Howard Catton said: ‘We do not want AfC to be undermined in any way by changes to the immigration rules or salary threshold levels.’
The RCN argues against raising the current minimum salary threshold of £21,478 for non-EEA nurses. The starting salary of a band 5 nurse is £21,692.
‘AfC MUST NOT BE UNDERMINED BY IMMIGRATION RULES’ –Howard Catton
‘The minimum threshold should therefore continue to be linked to band 5 within AfC to ensure that employers are able to recruit nurses to address shortterm shortages and to avoid migrants undercutting the resident labour force’, the RCN states in its submission. NHS Employers echoed the RCN’s call to protect AfC for the recruitment of overseas nurses in its submission.
It expressed concerns with the current points-based system citing how, at a June 2015 allocation panel, a minimum of 50 points was required to gain a certificate of sponsorship for entry to the UK. ‘This would have required a nurse, cardiac physiologist, radiographer or doctor in training to have had a salary in excess of £50,000,’ the organisation said. Yet for UK nurses, the entry level to band 5 provides a salary of £21,692 and 33 points. Under Home Office proposals, from April 2016, most tier 2 visa immigrants from outside the EEA must earn more than £35,000 to qualify for permanent UK residence. NHS Employers highlights the damage this might cause to an employer that has 40 theatre nurses from outside the EEA earning under £35,000. ‘Theatre nursing has long-standing recruitment and retention issues,’ it says.
8 july 15 :: vol 29 no RCNi.com 46 :: 2015by ${individualUser.displayName} on Nov 26, 2015. For personal use only. NoNURSING STANDARD Downloaded from other uses without permission. Copyright © 2015 RCNi Ltd. All rights reserved.
