Health board almost halves nursing agency spend with focus on ‘grow your own’

NHS Shetland director for nursing and acute services Kathleen Carolan. 

A focus on “grow your own workforce” has helped the health board slash its spend on agency nursing cover by almost a half.

NHS Shetland’s director of nursing and acute services Kathleen Carolan said the board had been working with “academic partners” to help its recruitment efforts.

Prof Carolan also reported recent successes in attracting newly qualified nurses from elsewhere in Scotland.

And she said three international graduates, from North America, Europe and Africa, had also been recruited.

Discussing the health board’s spend on “supplementary staffing” at during yesterday’s annual review, Prof Carolan said the new approach to recruitment had helped cut its monthly spend on agency nurses from roughly £180,000 per month to around £95,000.

Prof Carolan said there were “wide and varied” reasons for the use of supplementary staff, which includes agency workers and locums.

These included the need for staff to care for patients with increasingly complex needs, the focus on building “multi-professional teams” and the regular workforce turnover, such as maternity leave.

Overall, the board spend £7.7m on supplementary staff in 2023/24 – a small reduction on the £8.1m spend the previous year.

Chief executive Brian Chittick said staffing costs – including agency and locum workers –  were one of the board’s “biggest challenges”

“As you can see we’ve seen a decrease in our spending but it’s not enough,” he added.

“During the last year and into this year we ware working to understand our workforce needs better so we can make a bigger impact on this spend.”