The Problem
During the Covid-19 crisis staff redeployment was extensive and varied. Some staff were redeployed into high risk areas from their relatively safe ‘home’ wards while others were moved off wards to different duties. Nurses dealt with risk and uncertainty, huge changes to their ways of working over short periods of time and the constant worry for themselves and their close networks that they may be transmitters of the disease. The emotional impacts of such redeployment and the longer-term consequences are unknown.
What we did to address this problem
We spoke to 100 nurse managers and nurses in three NHS Trusts in England. This included those involved in redeploying nurses and those who were redeployed or worked in teams that received redeployed nurses. We used interviews, (nurses and nurse managers) and surveys (nurses only) to gather data. We looked for patterns and themes in the interview data and also explored nurse experiences over time in both the survey and interview data. Staff and patient groups of volunteers advised us throughout. We shared our findings with key organisations such as the Royal College of Nursing and NHS England and Improvement who helped us to develop recommendations that could influence policy and clinical practice.
What we found
We found that nurse managers experienced a lot of uncertainty and stress, having to make decisions about how to rapidly redeploy nurses to meet demands with limited guidance from their organisations. They were unsure how to support nurses during redeployment and how to re-build their teams after redeployment. A few nurses enjoyed their redeployment experience. Many experienced a lot of distress with about half thinking about leaving their jobs.
What we produced and who it is useful for and why
From these findings we developed 11 recommendations for the management of redeployment and workforce recovery.
With funding from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) developed two resources:
- National recommendations for the management of NHS nurse redeployment and crisis workforce recovery: A guide for acute NHS Trusts
- A best practice guide to support those tasked with implementing nurse redeployment
Both these resources are available to download here.