Be the Nurse You Dreamt of
Demelza Hospice Care for Children, with a hub in West St Leonards, has launched a new nurse recruitment campaign. The children’s charity, which provides clinical care and emotional support to children with serious or life-limiting conditions, throughout Kent, South East London and East Sussex, has taken a new approach to the nurse shortages that are affecting the healthcare system country-wide.
The new nurse recruitment campaign, coinciding with Demelza’s 25th anniversary, is being launched across the airwaves, national media and the transport network with the message: Be the nurse you dreamt of. The approach has been prompted by the scale of current vacancies across the NHS.
Recent analysis suggests there will be a shortfall of almost 40,000 nurses in England by 2024, even if the government hits its target of securing 50,000 more nurses by then. And this will have a trickle-down effect on nurses within the children’s hospice sector.
Hayley Clark, Director of People, Culture and Resources at Demelza, says: “We want to make sure we are reaching as many people as possible … Adverts will be running across Heart radio stations, in the national press … Southeast Apple News, across the Southeastern transport network, parts of the London underground, and digital and printed poster sites in the Southeast.”
The charity is not only revamping its approach to recruitment to backfill any existing vacancies; it has also set ambitious new targets within its five-year strategy, including reaching 500 new families, children and young people. To do that, Demelza will need to increase its workforce and attract the brightest and the best.
Lavinia Jarrett, Demelza’s Chief Executive, says: “As well as this highly visible campaign, our new workforce strategy will enable us to offer a career pathway to nurses in palliative care, as well as opportunities for nursing associate and nursing degree apprenticeship programmes. Nurses who join Demelza will be able to retain and develop new expert clinical skills, whilst delivering care through play, and family support through time and engagement.
“Employee retention and making Demelza an employer of choice for nurses is also key. Amendments to Demelza’s terms and conditions of employment, such as our increased maternity and sickness absence pay and increased on-call payments for nursing teams, will hopefully play a part in this.”
Any nurse joining Demelza will have a salary matching Agenda for Change (the latest NHS conditions of service) and high-cost area allowance, flexible working, good work-life balance, a 5% nurse retention bonus, as well as the option to continue within the NHS pension scheme.
And there can be no wider endorsement than that from one of Demelza’s own – Lorraine, a Band 6 nurse working at the Kent hospice said:
“Demelza is so different to working in other healthcare settings – you’re not only providing acute medical care, but you’re also providing holistic support and a stable environment for these families to enjoy – and it’s given me opportunities to develop skills that I never had before.”
If you want to be the nurse you dreamt of, go to: demelza.org.uk/work-with-us-demelza/nurses to find out more.
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