15 May 2020
Sixty student nurses have joined Shropshire’s two acute hospitals to help care for patients and boost the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The final year student nurses have been deployed across clinical areas of the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford, both of which are run by SaTH.
In March, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) and Health Education England (HEE) announced a plan to deploy student nurses to the NHS workforce to boost the ranks in dealing with the global pandemic. Student nurses were called-to-action to opt into deployment in the health service, both locally and nationally.
The students have joined SaTH over the last three weeks from partner universities, Staffordshire, Keele and Wolverhampton, as well as from further afield including Hertfordshire and Lancashire universities.
The third year students are supporting and caring for adult and young patients across a variety of clinical areas. All of the students are being supervised and supported by senior team members.
Helen Coleman, Lead Nurse for Education and Quality at SaTH, thanked hospital staff for supporting the new recruits.
She said: “The deployment of these student nurses has been a huge task and has required a significant amount of hard work and commitment in bringing everything together. This has enabled us to introduce a large number of staff members to the ‘NHS army’ over a short period of time.”
Maggie Bayley, Interim Chief Nurse at SaTH, said: “We are delighted to welcome the students into our Trust, and we are very grateful for their support in coming forward to provide care to our patients during this challenging time.
“Some of the students have also secured full-time employment with SaTH after they qualify, and we look forward to hopefully encouraging more of the recruits to join the hospitals permanently in the future.”