York and Scarborough NHS Trust set to recruit more than 100 staff from India

The York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has made offers to 107 medical staff following a recruitment trip to Kerala, India.

Members of the Trust’s board of directors were given an update on the recruitment at a meeting on Wednesday, February 22.

A report presented to the board states that following the recruitment trip to Kerala, the Trust has made offers to 97 registered nurses (RN) and 10 allied health professionals (AHP).

In recent years the Trust has faced issues with the recruitment and retention of staff, according to board papers.

The report states: “Work is underway to process applications and support candidates with their English to enable cohorts to be drafted so we can plan commencement dates across 2023/24.

“The Trust has started the process to bid for NHS England funding to support international nursing recruitment between April – November 2023 and has indicated a target of 90 international nurses which could generate £450,000 in funding.”

The board was also told that the Trust met its international nursing recruitment target in 2022/23, with 134 nurses recruited.

“The Trust is on track to deliver our international AHP recruitment target of 18 and has been recognised as the organisation with the highest level of international AHP’s on-boarded in the region.”

In January this year, the Trust, which runs Scarborough Hospital, had an 11.5 per cent vacancy rate for healthcare support workers in adult inpatient areas and a 14.5 per cent vacancy rate for registered nurses in adult inpatient areas.

When the number of international nurses that have recently joined the Trust is included, the vacancy rate on adult inpatient wards is reduced to 7.6 per cent.

Speaking at a board meeting in January, the chief nurse, Heather McNair, said recruitment was ongoing but vacancy levels for healthcare assistants (HCA) continued to be high.

She said there was “immense work ongoing around retention” and added that the Trust was struggling with staff who were leaving “very quickly”.

The chief nurse advised the board that despite the support provided to HCAs, “the general census” was that the role was “not what they anticipated with shifts and long days”, adding that “the nature and intensity can be surprising”.