Trusts are 'on course' for recruitment of nurses, meeting hears
The combined Royal Wolverhampton and Walsall Healthcare trust is 'on target' to implement permanent staff targets and reduce reliance on bank and temporary employees, a meeting has heard.
The first public meeting of the two trusts who now share many services, heard reports from the leads for group people committee about the challenge of keeping staff who train to become qualified nurses.
Alison Heseltine, a non executive officer said they were trying to fit nurses who are coming to the end of their training with vacancies in their specialist areas or ones in which they would hopefully thrive and enjoy working.
She said: "In Walsall we have 40 students due to qualify by September with 15 who will be nearly qualified and just have to fulfil certain elements of the course before they graduate."
The meeting heard in Wolverhampton it is 95 due to qualify in September, with 45 more needing to finish parts of the course and they will all be rotated into the system and found suitable roles."
Group chief people officer Alan Duffell said: "We need to keep control over our workforce in terms of reducing the reliance on bank staff.
"It has been a challenging financial year in the two months so far in common with the general picture in the country and we face the challenges of the winter to come but we are on target in terms of staff graduating and coming to work for us.
"I am confident they will all be very good employees and for our turn we have to provide and attractive environment for them to work in – a high turnover of staff and using the bank roll is not always conducive to that and puts pressures on the budget in terms extra costs which haven't been planned for."
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