Being an Agency nurse in the UK good/bad?

[TinaK]

Hello everyone

I am soon to be newly qualified and what with all the fears of current job freezes in the NHS I am not sure I will have a new job to go to ...have been considering agency nursing full time as they seem to offer really good flexibility in terms of the type of hours you want to work.... has any qualified nurse on here ever worked for an agency rather than the NHS? how good or bad has it been for you?

Tina K

[safewaygreenbox]

Life in the NHS is very different now. In Portsmouth where I was working we couldn't employ agency nurses as often as we should have because the trust had no money so life was hard.

But in the long run could be a good thing, I think employing agency workers is a bad thing for the NHS. Also paying somebody up to twice as much for less work (some don't do IV's Pumps etc) is not a moral booster. Having said that they are sometimes necessary.

[madwife2002, BSN, RN]

But in the long run could be a good thing, I think employing agency workers is a bad thing for the NHS. Also paying somebody up to twice as much for less work (some don't do IV's Pumps etc) is not a moral booster. Having said that they are sometimes necessary.

The only thing that will be good for nurses in the NHS is if they train lots more but to be truthful some of the nurses who come through you wouldnt want any more trained. so with lack of suitably trained nurses and more money needed there is a big problem. The ward where I worked we had 5 vacancies from earlier on in the year we weren't allowed to recruit and we weren't allowed to have agency or NHSP so where did that leave us, with short staffing levels and the rest of the the staff working very hard with low morale. If it wasnt for the night staff helping out with the washes I dunno what we would have done.