Former staff told ‘Your NHS Needs You’

More than 65,000 former nurses and doctors have been urged to help the NHS, as a new recruitment drive gets underway to support the fight against coronavirus.

Ruth May and Stephen Powis, England’s top nurse and top doctor, have called on colleagues who have left the NHS in recent years to re-register and help the health service to tackle the ‘greatest global health threat’ in a century.

As part of this, health bodies are writing out to those who have left their profession in the last three years with up to date skills and experience, asking them to return. Staff will be able to ‘opt in’ to a register to fill a range of clinical and non-clinical roles across the NHS, based on their skills and time away from practice.

NHS England has also revealed that final year medical students and student nurses are being offered the chance to take temporary, fully-paid roles to boost the NHS frontline even further.

Ruth May, chief nursing officer for England, said: “As the health service gears up to deal with the greatest global health threat in its history, my message to former colleagues is ‘Your NHS Needs You’. Our wonderful nurses in every corner of the country are preparing to change the way we work so that we can provide the right care for the rising numbers of people who will need it.

“But we can’t do it alone, so I am urging all recent former nurses to lend us your expertise and experience during this pandemic, because I have no doubt that you can help to save lives. And I’m grateful for senior students providing expert care in this time with their NHS colleagues.”

Professor Stephen Powis, national medical director for the NHS, said: “Our hardworking NHS staff are working round the clock to get ready for the peak of the pandemic, and today we are calling on former staff to come back and help us. It is only right we use every means at our disposal to bolster the frontline in the face of this unprecedented challenge for the NHS. By offering to return to the NHS now, these thousands of well-qualified and compassionate people will make more of a difference than ever before – not just to patients, but to colleagues and the wider community.”

The Nursing and Midwifery Council is writing out to more than 50,000 nurses whose registration has lapsed in the last three years. The General Medical Council will write to another 15,500 doctors who have left the register since 2017.