Four London trusts have created a new shared bank of nurses who can be called upon to fill gaps in rotas, amid nationwide nursing shortages and ongoing service pressures.
The North West London Nurses Collaborative Bank will allow nurse bank members employed by the trusts to move between any of the organisations by booking onto shifts through an app.
“This will help to reduce the pressure on an exhausted workforce whilst maintaining the highest standards of safety and patient care”
Lindsey Waddell
The trusts involved are Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Chelsea and Westminster Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust.
The platform will enable the trusts to advertise vacant shifts to a “pool” of 20,000 registered nurses who work across the four organisations.
There are also plans to expand the initiative and bring in additional trusts into the nurse bank this winter.
Those behind the project said it would help reduce agency spend and patient waiting lists, and potentially afford nurses signed up to work bank shifts more flexibility in terms of where and how they work.
The move comes six months after the same four trusts rolled out a collaborative bank for doctors.
Lindsey Waddell, programme lead at North West London Consolidation Programme, said the doctor bank had “played a critical role helping meet the challenges of the Covid surges”.
With the nurse bank now in place too, Ms Waddell said: “This will help to reduce the pressure on an exhausted workforce whilst maintaining the highest standards of safety and patient care.
“If London’s hospitals are to tackle the ever-mounting waiting list this summer, they’ll need the support”
Claire Gore
“Improved regional collaboration is a key objective here at the North West London [Integrated Care System], so we’re delighted to be part of this trailblazing workforce initiative with our closest neighbours,” she added.
Claire Gore, director of HR at London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust, added: “If London’s hospitals are to tackle the ever-mounting waiting list this summer, they’ll need the support of intelligent, rigorously tested staffing solutions.”
She said the trust would be using the collaborative nurse bank as a “valuable supplement to our smaller internal staff pool, providing peace of mind that we’ll always be able to secure the skilled nurses that we need to keep wards safely staffed”.
Both the doctor and nurse bank systems are run by Patchwork Health, a healthcare staffing company led by current and former NHS clinicians.
Dr Anas Nader, chief executive at Patchwork Health, said the doctor bank project had “shown remarkable results” and said collaborative banks could make “genuine flexible working in the NHS available to all”.
https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/workforce/north-west-london-trusts-launch-collaborative-bank-of-20000-nurses-15-11-2021/
