Untangle the red tape and let retired nurses help vaccine roll-out
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Untangle the red tape and let retired nurses help vaccine roll-out

Jane Bates Retired nurse

If ever we needed all hands on deck, it’s now. There is an army of retired clinicians as keen as mustard to help deliver the vaccination programme and heaven knows, we need them.

Nursing Standard. 36, 2, 12-12. doi: 10.7748/ns.36.2.12.s7

Published: 03 February 2021

They are not put off by the threat of danger, even though they are likely to be in a higher-risk group; they’re willing to travel and are up for long hours.

So what has been stopping them? NHS bureaucracy.

Before anyone can get back in harness, they must go on a course. Or two, or three. In the case of one retired nurse I know, the number of statutory training sessions she was required to complete, including one on anti-terrorism, reached double figures. She gave up in disgust.

In normal circumstances, of course we should have preparatory training, but these circumstances are anything but normal.

If a global pestilence is not reason enough to bypass the tedium of a manual-handling class, you wonder what would be. A triffid invasion? The moon falling and landing on Manchester?

It was the same last spring. A capable and experienced ex-nurse friend – who would have been a godsend to any ICU – spent a day filling in back-to-work forms.

Eventually, she was told these forms were obsolete and given another load to complete.

She sent them all off and never heard from anyone again. She concluded she wasn’t needed – but I suspect it was NHS bureaucracy again, in all its dithering incompetence.

At time of writing, a glimmer of common sense has been glimpsed on the horizon, so unnecessary training such as preventing terrorism and fire safety can be foregone, and maybe the proffered help from retirees can finally be expedited.

Let’s hope so.

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