Social care nurse recruitment and medicine sustainability in the East of England

In a series of interviews with the regional co-chairs of the Social Care Nursing Advisory Councils (SCNACs), Madeleine Anderson has been looking at the priorities of each council and how the co-chairs are promoting social care nursing in their local area.

In this final interview she hears from the regional co-chairs of the East of England council, whose regional priorities are attracting and retaining more nurses in social care and developing medicines sustainability locally.

The co-chairs

The East of England SCNAC is co-chaired by Caron Sanders-Cook and Victoria Hulstrom. Ms Sanders-Cook is a Queen’s Nurse and currently operations manager at Canford Healthcare, and has worked in health and social care nursing for over 30 years, including serving on the chief nurse adult social care advisory panel. Ms Victoria Hulstrom is clinical director at Nouvita Healthcare, and a registered learning disabilities nurse.

Priority 1: Recruitment and retention of social care nurses

The East of England council is committed to ensuring more student nurses have placement opportunities in social care, to increase understanding of the role and highlight the progression opportunities available in the sector.

‘Just trying to attract new staff into social care nursing is quite a struggle. I think historically when people have been doing their training at university, they’ve been told you need to go and work in the NHS for a particular amount of time, or you need to go and do inpatient services for a particular amount of time. That’s not necessarily the case, because for some people that can actually be quite off putting, if that’s not the area of nursing they want to go into,’ Ms Hulstrom explained to Nursing in Practice.

She cautioned that a lack of preceptorship opportunities can prevent younger nurses from seeing social care as a viable profession.

‘It’s an ageing group of nurses in nursing care. In social care, you don’t get many people looking to do their preceptorship in social care nursing, and that’s something I think is really important, because you’re getting that fresh skill set in; you’re getting the new ideas,’ Ms Hulstrom said.

She added that bringing more young people into nursing helps bring a ‘different view on life’ into the workforce, which is helpful when meeting a variety of community needs.

Her comments were made ahead of Skills for Care’s recent announcement of a new nursing preceptorship programme aimed at expanding the recruitment and retention of newly registered nurses and nursing associates working adult social care across England.

The council is also working to strengthen relationships between social care providers and educational institutions, to improve communication between otherwise separate bodies who can collaborate to expand preceptorship and training for nurses in social care.

Priority 2: Medicines sustainability

The East of England SCNAC is also working to improve medicines sustainability by reducing waste locally, work that is being led by Ms Sanders-Cook.

In particular, the council is looking at how inhaler recycling and medicine disposal can be improved across nursing and residential care settings.

The council is also looking at where patients can be scaled-off from medications that they have historically been prescribed but no longer require.

‘We’re looking at medication reviews, because there’s a lot of people in social care who are on historical medication and they don’t need to be anymore,’ Ms Sanders-Cook explained.

Information on medicines sustainability is being shared on posters across care settings, which include QR codes linking to information on how medicines can be disposed of locally, including through nearby community pharmacies.