Workforce development, and nurses specifically, was a strong theme coming from our recent strategy events held during time-out and we have been working on ways to support this crucial area. Initially an 18 month programme, Florence will recruit nurses new to primary care, place them within host practices and be responsible for their overall training to become valuable new members of the workforce. Even better news is that the CCG has been allocated some funding to use for Nursing Career Start and so they are able to give their support to the Federation scheme too.
As well as encouraging nursing staff into primary care, the focus of the scheme is to take some of the pressure (and risk) away from practices. We understand just how much effort is needed to attract and train staff so we’ll take care of the recruitment and administration, and get nurses up to speed in terms of training.
Nurses will then do some in practice shadowing and practical learning, so that they become additional resource across practices over the subsequentmonths as they become ready to join one of the teams permanently.
If your practice is interested in being involved in Florence there are still a few weeks left to make an expression of interest in being a host practice.
Practices can apply alone or as a group – [email protected] or [email protected] have more details.
Our Florence vacancies are now live on NHS jobs so please share the details with your networks!
We’re delighted to be launching Florence and to begin some of the important work identified as part of the Fit for the Future project and we’ll continue to keep you updated.