Boot camp for district nurses launched

A robust ‘boot camp’ style training course has been launched to retain district nurses in Wolverhampton.

The five-week training programme started this month at the headquarters of The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust’s community and district nursing service at Wolverhampton Science Park, with 10 recent recruits.

Recruits, who have come from different backgrounds, such as healthcare assistants and general nursing, will learn all aspects of district nursing over a full timetable through each week.

The first boot camp finishes on 16 December. Over the next few weeks staff will see a variety of company representatives, delegates from all divisions, Practice Education Facilitators (PEFs) and adult community service leads and spend time with their allocated buddies to start to achieve their competencies. 

Hayley Law, Service Delivery Manager – Planned Care Adult Community and Professional Nurse Advocate launched the boot camp, handing out goody bags to all new recruits. 

She has tailored the programme following meetings with different teams, including tissue viability, palliative care, bereavement service, virtual ward, care co-ordination and ambulatory clinics. All will be delivering sessions to the recruits.

“We have struggled to recruit into posts in Planned Care District Nurses and the demand for community nursing is higher than ever, especially since COVID-19,” said Hayley.

“This year we have restructured the city from six teams to four larger teams – North, South, East and West across the city – to ensure safety and equality across all teams for staff and patients.

“We have recruited new starters within all teams, at all bands, which is amazing, but we wanted to look at what we could do differently to help retain our new starters and help them become a confident, autonomous, community staff member.”

The idea was hatched when Leigh Dillon, Senior Matron – Adult Community Services , Primary Care Services, approached Catherine Wilson, Deputy Director of Nursing, for some guidance.

Catherine directed the team to Walsall Healthcare, RWT’s partner Trust, which has a similar, shorter induction programme that really appealed to Leigh’s team. 

Leigh wanted to create a similar model to one for the Trust’s overseas nurses, as community nursing is very niche, requiring staff to work at a high level in a community setting as a lone working practitioner.

Hayley added: “Our staff will embark on a robust five-week induction boot camp, where they will learn, develop, and be educated on all aspects of community nursing to get them ready for district nursing life.

“This will then allow them to feel confident, competent and ready to take on their new role of a community staff member.”

Hayley’s aim is to run the boot camp four times per year, in line with the new recruits.

The next one is planned for the end of February 2023 to capture the next group of new starters who will be joining over the winter months. 

After the five weeks the nurses will join their teams and will start working through their competency documents and start seeing patients shadowing another district nurse.

Nurses will be asked to complete a survey after each boot camp so Hayley and her team can make any tweaks to the training that are needed.