Hi all,
Hoping the STW massive has some good experiences or advice which may help my partner. She sat her final nursing exam last December, and passed, and recieved her registration in March. However we had our first baby in September 2010 so she has been busy looking after little one, although has been keeping an eye out for jobs since then. She is now actively looking again, and there are absolutley no jobs out there for newly qualified nurses. A lot of her closer friends from the course in Glasgow have had to relocate to England to get any kind of work, but a lot have had no option but to sit it our and try to apply for any roles which come up. She has applied for a few and the most recent, she had experience in the area and actually knows one of the senior nurses in the department. She didnt even get an interview, and the nurse has told her that there were over 200 applicants for this role! So she is going to keep applying, but we are looking for some advice about things she can do to improve her chances of getting to the interview stage.
She has been told that making an appointment to meet with the ward sister and get a tour of the facility would help, and she has done that, but no luck. She is also looking at additional paid courses she can put herself through such as IV etc.

Just to see what advice anyone in this area can give, and any suggestions for additional courses etc would be much appreciated. 🙂

Its very very difficult at the moment in Scotland with recruitment freezes. Get on the nurse bank will help as then she not only will get some experience but will have access to the Intranet and any “internal candidate only” jobs – certainly in Edinburgh this would be worth doing as they have a n external recruitment freeze but do allow internal recruitment for posts as it does not increase teh total number of people employed

The other option is to get a job in a Nursing home – allways looking for staff – because the job is lousy and so is the pay.

Good luck

Bank work?

I’ve just asked my wife (Clinical Ward Manager at a big, if not the biggest (I think she’s bragging) hospice in the UK).
Is your partner looking outside of the NHS? Hospices and other types of medical charities are really feeling the pinch at the moment but if your partner did some voluntary work which would be at auxilary level as a volunteer even though she’s qualified, she’d be guaranteed an interview when a band 4(?) job came up (wife is heavily involved in short listing and recruiting).
Not great when she’s grafted to become qualified but needs must.
Having said that, my wife and all the staff at the hospice would pack it all in and sell the Big Issue rather than work in the NHS again compared to where they are.
It’s that ‘out of the box’ thinking thing again.
Good luck to your partner.

joining the ‘bank’ or local agencies could help her get shifts on wards… can be a good way of getting known as a good worker by ward staff and managers.

i’m sorry to hear she’s having so much trouble… the nerves of qualifying then working as a nurse ‘without supervision’ are really common, the longer you have to wait before going to work and getting on with the job the more anxious i’ve noticed people become.

i’m down south in england so i cant offer any advice for scotland… but i’m sure people on here can 🙂 all i can really suggest is getting her name/face and work ethos known by joining the bank/agencies.

good luck!

Thanks guys, unfortunately the Bank in the area requires 6 months post-registration experience, as do most of the roles that come up. I think the only option may be to do some voluntary work or do an auxiliary position until something comes up. Wasnt sure if going for an aux role may actually look worse than just doing some courses?

I’ve asked again. Nicky says definitely do the voluntary thing. Showing willing in the job counts for heaps and if your partner can do some shifts in the speciality where she would like to work or even where she feels her first potential job opportunity could be, do it. Bank and/or agency would be just as good – better as at least she is getting paid. It’s all about showing willing and hands on experience.
Nicky also says, qualifying and then going onto further study without on ward experience would be a backward step due to the lack of actually working unsupervised.
She’d almost certainly reject the easily exam qualified but no post qual. experience and interview the just enough qualified with practical experience.
It’s all about hands on patients 🙂

Good luck with the Bank work. My M-in-L is a matron, and she says they are not recruiting any more nurses/HCA’s… or taking on any bank staff due to the Gov’s cuts. So those who rely on Bank work to make ends meet are well and truly f-cked!

My wife’s cousin is a newly qualified nurse, and she’s sending applications left, right and centre. No luck yet 🙁

Pretty sure that New Zealand is desperate for qualified nursing staff (IIRC), if that pickles your fancy..?

One of the guys in the station’s wife just qualified as a midwife and had to go down south to get her first job. She looked at bank work here first (Glasgow) but was scuppered by the six month thing. She really likes it down there, but is ultimately doing it so she can get on the bank here..
I’m in the ambulance service and apparently we’re getting A LOT of applications from newly qualified nurses at the mo.. Seems to be a problem for a lot of the “vocational” graduates.. We seem to be training up tons of nurses, teachers etc but there’s nowhere near the same levels of jobs available that there were a few years ago..
Bit of a joke that the unis are still taking in the same amount of folk but there’s hardly any jobs for them when they qualify!

My wife is a practice nurse, but she also does shifts for Marie Curie as and when the need arises in our area.
Some Marie Curie nurse are full time, others work on a ‘bank’ basis which is what my wife does. As it’s completely separate from the NHS then maybe worth a look?

The governmnet took nurse training away from hospitals and made it book led at a univercity etc, with hospital based training at least if your face fitted and you knew your stuf you had a job after qualifying.

Sadly its easier to buy experience now, than to take someone on with book learnt quals, the one with experience will have the experience of the job, that you can only learn on the factory floor.

Keep trying and perhaps vote labour next time,

Thats interesting guys, thanks for all the input. Good advice about not doing more quals if its not looked on well. She has a lot of Direct and Care Service experience doing care in the community home visits, so she has good hands on experience of the patient care side, hopefully that will help her. We are kind of tied location wise with family and baby etc, although I know a lot of people will say we need to move, its a choice etc etc.

Most of her friends who have headed south are only doing it really to get the 6 months post reg out of the way with a view to heading north as soon as anything comes up. As mentioned above, I cant believe that the headlines arent ablaze with this as its a huge issue and noone seems to be noticing it, unlike the teachers situation which is all over the media.

If its just a job she wants then try the nursing homes.

Slightly different scenario, but not too far removed, my Wife has been trying to get a uni place for midwifery. She scored about as high grades as its possible to get on the Access to Health course, & got through to the interview stage for all three elected unis, but sadly no offers.
The sheer numbers of applicants amazed her…pretty much 100 > 1 according to one of the unis. Whats annoyed me is the yarn these students have been spun by the colleges offering the access courses, & the uni’s themselves when they do the open days. They are enticed into studying for a qualification that it now seems offers little more than a remote chance of actually winning a place. For example, the largest uni offering midwifery places around here took on 30 students & half of those places were allocated to deferals from those offered places last year, but then subsequently rescinded when they had the budget cut.
Its looking like her, & thousands like her, have spent two years, & over £1.5k studying hard for somtehing that is simply was never going to happen because of the chronic amount of funding available. And yet the statistics supposedly suggest that 65% of midwives will retire in the next ten years. 😕

[mini-rant over} 🙂

Its looking like her, & thousands like her, have spent two years, & over £1.5k studying hard for somtehing that is simply was never going to happen because of the chronic amount of funding available. And yet the statistics supposedly suggest that 65% of midwives will retire in the next ten year.

Its the same in the building trade, no apprenticeships anymore, and not to many new or refurbs going on to get experience.

The unis and colleges get paid per student, so will run courses to get the cash .

Courses need to be dramaticly slimmed down to what jobs are available at the end, just like the old block courses, you worked for a company and thy sponsored you through college and uni, if you failed you lost your job, do well and you where guaranteed a job.

Most nurse banks are closed to new applicants or only taking experienced.
We’re getting over 100 applicants per vacancy.

Your options?
Leave Scotland or work in a nursing home.

A really shit time to be a new nurse I’m afraid.

As per the above advice, if an option look further afield? My SO is currently completing a research PhD before moving to Consultant level, and has had to fight tooth and nail the last 4 years to get through the NHS system and had to move all over the country for various posts (and she was on the previous allocated career path).

Prior to this she worked in both New Zealand and Australia and every month she will have something sent through from there literally begging her to return, and at much MUCH higher remuneration as well.

I think the nursing qualifications may be slightly different (NZ used to have a tiered degree / non degree training structure not sure about now though) so would need to look into how the qualifications cross over etc, but from what I understand there is certainly no shortage of positions in either country.

My mrs qualified about 3 years ago and tried to get a job (she can’t really travel as I work shifts and she can’t drive) not a job to be had in forth valley nhs. She is now doing bank work in a nursing home and not particularly enjoying it.Most of the other nurses who got jobs ended up in Glasgow or Edinburgh.

From what i gather there has been a shortage of nursing jobs for a few years now?

I suppose its not really the Unis fault, as they only supply demand like any other business, although to be fair they are pretty much useless at whatever they are doing. My missus has had an apalling level of support and professionalism from the uni, incompetence bordering on the negligent.

I suppose that there is the whole, if they stop training people for specific things, when things pick up, they are then in a position with resource shortages, its a difficult one. My missus would jump at Australia but Im not so keen, and I know she wouldnt really be happy long term there as she is very family oriented.

Is there no sign that Oz will be impacted by the same pressures that have caused the bad situation here?

Re AUS, i can only speak from what Friends / Family are experiencing at the minute as I’ve been in the UK for the past 5 years. But to all accounts everything is pretty much rosy!

Even family and friends in NZ, specifically Christchurch with all the recent events seem to be faring a lot better than over here.

I think a lot of it has to do with the nature of their economies / social policy, less reliance on the Big banks and credit as well as much tougher restrictions on population growths as well as a higher levels of natural resources (ie exports).

I’m certainly no economist so it might just be because God likes them (well … not the Aussies … no one likes them)

my local trust closed one of its three hospitals of the thirty cardiac nurses only 20 got jobs the other ten have been ‘re positioned’ inc. one with 20 yrs cardiac IC experince who moved sideways (!) and is now an admissions clerk..

Even if she does get a job, expect to be stuck on a pay band for a few years at least!

Voluntary work will stand out on her C.V at said Hospitals or similar!

Not nursing exactly, but as a part of her job Mrs mW recruits newly qualified therapists for her NHS department. Voluntary or auxiliary work is exactly the sort of thing that gets one candidate an interview over another and would be well worth doing until the right post comes along.

Also as others have said be prepared to move, very few of the last couple of years intake have lived locally, pretty much every year there’s at least one new recruit out of around 6 that moves a considerable distance to take the job.

Similar experience with physio in the NHS. Really feel for, the often really good, newly qualified’s who can’t get work. Voluntary work, bank work then apply as an internal candidate is the only way we’ve seen people making it in recently. Good luck.

TandemJeremy – Member

Its very very difficult at the moment in Scotland with recruitment freezes.

same in most parts of England especially in general nursing. Thing is most hospitals with no vacancies are also runing their regular staff into the ground with poor numbers in wards and over-reliance on unfailiar bank staff in an ‘effort’ to save money. It doesn’t take a genius to see how counterproductive this will be but I get the feeling that if the wheels don’t fall off completely before the next general election or it can continue to be blamed on Noolab, the current government don’t give a monkeys.

Look at Australia/New Zealand if you can bear living abroad for a few years; the pay, comditions and cost of living are all awesome, we have a few nurse friends/former colleagues who have gone, and live the sort of life in the sort of beautuiful house/surroundings that would need a £80k salary over here.

Emigrate… the NHS is fecked! ( if you can)

Watching “made in Britain” on bbc2… Talking about med students..
Can I take it there’s no glut of med students then? I know their course structure is different but is this a problem for them once they’ve finished their 5 years? Or do a large enough amount of them choose not to work in the Nhs and there’s enough turnover that there’s enough demand for the others?
Just thinking about uni type courses where you used to finish and pretty much get a job fairly easily once you’ve qualified/graduated?

No huge competition for newly qualified docs too! many emigrate. loads have left to fairer climes in australizealand. I went too ….loved it but alas came home to finish my specialist training and met my wife to be and now shackled to the NHS and its death throes!

Too big to die any time soon I think. But fair play to Cameron, he’s doing his best to hurry the process along!!

Nobody has mentioned the high cost of pensions, you take on partime or agency staff and theres no need to enrol them into the nhs pension scheme, thus whoever owns and runs the hospitals, now and in the future has saved a lot of money over the following years, they can also get rid of poor performing nurses a lot easier

Nothing to do with it Project – almost no agency staff are now used in the NHS in my area, agency staff are far higher hourly cost that NHS staff, part time / bank NHS staff are entitled to pensions, the pensions are not run by or costed to hospitals but a central scheme – which any way is in surplus right now – more is paid in than is taken out.

so basically no.

I seem to remember being offered a proper nhs pension when I joined an nhs bank back in 1998. On account of being an employee of the organisation with the same rights as any other. Actually, i don’t seem to remember because I took them up on it. 😀

But how times change. 🙁

they can also get rid of poor performing nurses a lot easier

Not strictly true. You do get a great ‘try before you buy’ effect when lots of your regular bank staff apply for your permanent posts. (which incidentally takes the piss out of the strictly-regulated health service recruitment and selection process since you still have to score all candidates and explain to HR and unsuccessful candidates that the sharpest interviewee on the day didn’t get the job because you know what a dreadful colleague they are when actually at work)

The austerity measures, pensions cutbcks and vacancy freezes do nothing for poor performance for all the staff already in post. In fact it just makes it harder for people burnt out and fed up in their jobs to move to a new post and rekindle their enthusiasm. If you want to make a workforce more effective you need vacancies for new enthusiatic staff and much much more robust performance managment/dismissal policies for crap ones.