Challenging attitudes to agency nurses

JAMES PARSONS, managing director of specialist healthcare recruiter, Arrows Group, argues that rather than draining NHS resources, firms like his are helping to keep the service afloat.

 Whenever times get tough, it seems that the logical consequence is to find a scapegoat to absorb the blame and with the NHS facing massive spending cuts, as the Government seeks to claw back the billions lost in the financial crisis, it looks as if the healthcare sector has found one in the shape of the specialist recruitment consultancy. The criticism levelled against such firms is fairly straightforward. The NHS is under huge financial pressure and levels of care are therefore under threat. Yet, at the same time, these commercial organisations are making a profit out of supplying nurses to the service. This is unacceptable, the argument goes, and the consultancies should either be forced to reduce their fees or be banned outright. But how accurate is this simplistic picture? Furthermore, is there more to the work of these firms? Firstly, let’s examine what a recruitment consultancy working in the healthcare sector actually does. My own firm, Arrows Group, focuses on the recruitment of temporary nurses for both the NHS and the private sector in specialist areas such as pediatrics, A&E, theatre, and midwifery – the areas where staff shortages are at their most acute.

We maintain a large bank of these key professionals that are prepared to work on a flexible basis in order to meet requirements and fit in with their lifestyles. That means planning rotas around the demands of family and social life, taking into account how feasible it is for a nurse to relocate for a specific length of time, paying well (although not extravagantly) and taking the time and trouble to learn what makes each nurse “tick”. We operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, just like the NHS, and we are highly regulated – setting us apart from some of the “cowboys” who exploited the system in the past. Because of the difficulty of finding enough qualified staff to satisfy demand, we also work with nurses from a wide range of countries around the world and, in particular, with specialists from Australia and New Zealand, from the Philippines and from several African nations. Every one must have at least a year’s experience in the UK – something that has to be rigorously checked out before anybody can be deployed to a Trust. This, of course, costs money, which is why we charge the fees that we do to the NHS. Of course it could be argued that no matter what commercial imperatives firms like mine operate under, no extra costs can be justified at a time when NHS budgets are under such pressure. But this ignores the fact that without a large number of temporary nurses the NHS could simply not deliver its current level of care.