Health board encouraged to ‘grow our own’ staff to cut costs
Elgan Hearn Local Democracy Reporter
A priority for Powys Teaching Health Board (PTHB) is to “grow our own” staff as an alternative to using expensive agency nurses, a health chief has stressed.
Members of the PTHB board were told of this at their annual general meeting on Monday, September 15 by Chief Executive, Hayley Thomas.
Amidst the doom and gloom of the health board’s financial woes, Ms Thomas wanted to ensure that the staff’s hard work and initiatives to improve services were also brought to members’ attention at the meeting.
Ms Thomas said: “Given the challenges that are facing the NHS, it can be easy to focus on things that are not working as well as we would wish – reflecting back on the year I want to ensure that we do justice to the achievements of our hard-working staff.
“Despite the continues increasing pressures, staff have demonstrated resilience collaboration and creativity in addressing the needs of our population.
“It’s not going to be possible to cover all the great work that was done during the last year – I will attempt to highlight some key achievements. “
Programme
Ms Thomas explained that the health board’s “Aspiring Nurses” programme was helping PTHB to offer residents the opportunity to “earn while they learn.”
Ms Thomas said: “They join us as health care workers; they are trained on the job through our university partnerships and then work towards a career as a registered nurse once they qualify.
“At the year-end (March 31) 78 staff are being supported at different stages of their nurse degree, and our award-winning Aspiring Nurses programme continues to be a priority for us.
“Alongside this, we’ve been delighted to expand our international work force. 31 internationally educated community nurses joined us, more than three times the number than the previous year.”
Cost reductions
Ms Thomas added that a further six intentional mental health nurses had also joined PTHB during the year,
Ms Thomas said: “I’d like to extend my thanks to the people across Powys who have made our overseas staff welcome both in our hospital and communities.
“Alongside other measures, this is helping us reduce the cost of agency nursing.”
She added that it was “important to start early” and PTHB’s academy, careers and enterprise scheme had engaged with 5,500 learners during the 2024/2025 academic.
Ms Thomas said, “We know this helps inspire the young people of Powys to be the health care professionals of the future.”
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About time too – but also employ the nurses you train!
Agree that they should employ those who they train, but can they retain them when adjacent health boards and further afield decide to recruit Powys products rather than train their own?. If the training model is good then all Welsh health boards should engage in this type of training scheme.
Do nurses choose agency work over permie jobs just for better rates or is it also about the flexibility to pick and choose shifts. If the second is a big driver then could something similar be offered to permies through an inhouse agency.