Eleven former nurses in Lincolnshire have begun training to become registered nurses in community and acute settings, as part of the Return to Practice programme run by Health Education East Midlands.
The programme was created to support nurses who left the profession to regain their nursing registration. Health Education East Midlands is paying for the cost of the course, as well as providing £500 towards the students' expenses. The trusts involved in the scheme, United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust and Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust also receive £500 for each nurse they take on when the training is completed.
Head of practice learning Dianne Charysz said: 'This is an exciting opportunity to return local nurses to employment within Lincolnshire and we are looking forward to supporting them through the course. We are looking towards a similar collaboration next year.'
The course runs for 24 weeks at which point the nurses will have completed degree level academic work and a minimum of 150 hours in practice. Nurses on the course study for the academic segment of the training at the University of Derby, while engaging in their practical retraining in local healthcare settings. The course is the first of its kind to be run in Lincolnshire in eight years, with nurses wishing to return to practice from the county previously having to travel to the University of Northampton to study.
Deputy chief nurse of the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust, Liz Ball said, 'I'm delighted that we have a return to practice course being delivered locally in Lincolnshire and hope that the nurses will become part of our future workforce. We are making massive improvements in the quality of our services, and are looking to recruit more clinical staff to build on the excellent improvements in care we have already made.'