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Nursing home hopes to entice nurse recruits with offer of a holiday and car

A nursing home in Scarborough is trying to attract nurses by offering a car and a holiday in the sun to new recruits

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A nursing home is offering to send nurse recruits on a fortnight's holiday to Spain, Portugal or Italy – before they even start their new jobs.

Saint Cecilia’s Nursing Home in the seaside resort of Scarborough in north east England, which provides nursing care for up to 44 residents, is trying new approaches to recruit nursing staff.

As well as the holiday it is offering a car, a £31,000 salary, coverage of Nursing and Midwifery Council registration fees and other benefits in a bid to fill four nurse vacancies.

Managing director Mike Padgham said: ‘Recruiting good nursing staff is extremely tough at the moment – the hardest it has been in living memory – and you have to go the extra mile if you want to attract good applicants.’

Care homes struggling to recruit

The shortage of nurses in the independent sector reflects that in the NHS, with many care homes reliant on agency staff to fill gaps in rotas. An RCN survey last autumn obtained details of 1,829 shifts in care homes. It showed that 18% of the homes had a shortfall of one or more registered nurses and 24% of nurses they used were bank or agency nurses.

A care home in Leeds, called Donisthorpe Hall, was forced to close its nursing wing in February because of staff shortages, while days later Hawkesgarth Lodge care home in Whitby, not far from Scarborough closed, blaming  a national shortage of trained nursing and care staff’. 

The RCN estimates there are up to 40,000 nursing vacancies in England.


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