More than 150 new nursing staff recruited to Shropshire’s two acute hospitals
More than 150 new Staff Nurses and Health Care Assistants (HCAs) have been recruited to work at Shropshire’s two acute hospitals in the last couple of months.
The new Staff Nurses and HCAs will either work at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) or the Princess Royal Hospital (PRH) in Telford. Some have already started work at The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH), which runs the two hospitals, with the rest due to take up their posts in the coming weeks and months.
The new recruits include around 100 Staff Nurses and around 70 HCAs, most of which are on permanent contracts, with the rest recruited for the hospitals’ Bank of temporary staff.
Recruitment, specifically for registered nurses, will continue with weekly interviews underway among other initiatives.
Sarah Bloomfield, Director of Nursing and Quality at SaTH, said: “Our Staff Nurses and Health Care Assistants deliver excellent care to our patients at both RSH and PRH.
“Our recruitment has focused on ensuring our new recruits display the caring and compassionate qualities we rightly require to provide the highest standard of care possible for our patients.
“We have said consistently that we want to recruit more nurses to reduce our reliance on agency and temporary staff. Our Trust is not alone – the situation is reflected nationally – so we have been looking at a number of innovations we can introduce to recruit staff locally, across the UK and overseas.
“We’ll continue our efforts to ensure that over the coming months we will see more permanent staff on our wards as our new starters get settled in, which will mean better continuity of care and more support for ward teams.”
The new Staff Nurse recruits include 72 from the Philippines, a further 17 from recruitment events at RSH earlier this month, eight from Italy and a further two from Denmark.
All of the recent 69 HCA appointments were recruited following information days held at RSH and PRH earlier this year.
People who are interested in working at the Trust can find out more by searching for the role “Staff Nurse” or “Health Care Assistant” in Shrewsbury or Telford on the website www.jobs.nhs.uk
