Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Elaine Grierson — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 09:58:42 GMT

HI that's all great advice thank you! I will certainly pass all of this on to my manager and see if we can re think anything :)

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Elaine Grierson — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 09:56:04 GMT

unfortunately as a charity we have suffered from redundancies and lost a lot of staff. As a result of that we also had to change the way we work which means now not only do we not have the staff to train students, we do not get the case load that would be required to successfully qualify as a VN. We trained nurses for years until we had a huge change of circumstances.

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Sal the 1st — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 20:43:33 GMT

[quote userid="30245" url="~/001/nonclinical/occupational/f/employment/32279/recruitment---struggling-to-hire-vns/177656#177656"]RVNs are being trained very differently now and (especially if Uni students) have generally been in a gold standard hospital environment. They want to save the world, not just go home on time. [/quote]

and don't I know it - sadly a lot of the time (by no means all) that means while they are busy saving the world the other aspects of the job like keeping the practice clean and running smoothly goes to pot.

[quote userid="30245" url="~/001/nonclinical/occupational/f/employment/32279/recruitment---struggling-to-hire-vns/177656#177656"]They want to save the world, not just go home on time. I would make a push about the great side to charity work and what good you do during the day. You need to steer them away from the image of just castrating dogs off the needle and not being able to work cases up due to money which can be the impression of charity work. [/quote]

agree with this - I was in charity for 11yrs - often the charity cases got a better work up than they ever would out in normal practice. See far more interesting caseload.

Have you tried approaching various nurse training providers/colleges locally and offering 'experience days' to their about to qualify bunch - might snag you a keeper nurse?

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

jenni99 — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 19:48:10 GMT

We advertised last summer for an RVN and a MRCVS - not a single reply for the MRCVS role yet ! One for the RVN - unfortunately the RVN we thought wouldn't enhance or flourish within the team. Eventually we were joined by a (totally fabulous, outspoken, no sht get em girl!) RVN who has worked and trained with us in various roles over 12 years, her reason for leaving her hospital dream job ? . She can walk to work and do her horses on the way. ------ not really a thing we have control over but a thing.

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Becky692 — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 19:06:05 GMT

Edited to ad:

I applied to work FOR FREE for Streetvet and they told me they had been overwhelmed by volunteers and didn’t need me atm. I know it’s not full time work but it just goes to show what can be achieved when people think they’re making a difference and social media is used to reinforce ideals. You’re both charities, have a look at their promo material and see if it can be used as inspiration to help you advertise your good work.

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Becky692 — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 18:57:07 GMT

Hi Elaine,

When looking for nurses in vain before, we enlisted the help of a recruitment analyst service and they gave us some great advice that really worked (we got 8 applicants for 2 roles that had previously had none). Here is some generic advice from them about what applicants are looking for:

- the role needs to have the suggestion that £25k or above is the average salary they can expect, think adverts that say £23-28k or something. Obviously more if you can, we aren’t too far from you and a lot of wages are advertising around the £30k mark for experienced nurses.

- the adverts you see that confirm your lower wage pitchings are still visible for you to compare to because they’re the ones not getting applicants either!

- holidays should be at least 5 weeks, a birthday day off is also commonplace.

- nurses expect to see that there has been a thought given to them as people. A lot of adverts now include gym membership, fruit baskets, in house support for mental health etc.

- ask the last person that took the job what appealed to them about it. The job adverts are usually done by the HVN, normally the oldest member of the team and the one to have applied for jobs the longest time ago! It’s easy to forget how out of touch that can make you about what’s appealing about the practice to the outside viewer.

- your RVNs should be wearing scrubs. You can tell a lot about how a practice views the role of the RVN by if they still make them wear tunics or if they can now wear scrubs. Also, everyone hates tunics! Ha!

- are there any perks specific to your practice? Can they bring their dogs into work each day? This is a huge bonus and people will move practice specifically for this benefit.

- advancement is a huge issue in the industry. If there’s an opportunity for certificate holders/advanced nurse clinics/senior nurse roles then advertise that.

- social media is a really useful tool for giving an insight into who you are as a practice. Use it to give your workplace a personality.

Then some more specific advice (my opinion here FYI, but based on what they told us):

- your salary is only really competitive for newly qualified nurses and they are still young and enthusiastic! I think pitching it based on short hours and no OOH etc is more appealing to older nurses, who will be looking at salaries starting at £25/26k. RVNs are being trained very differently now and (especially if Uni students) have generally been in a gold standard hospital environment. They want to save the world, not just go home on time. I would make a push about the great side to charity work and what good you do during the day. You need to steer them away from the image of just castrating dogs off the needle and not being able to work cases up due to money which can be the impression of charity work.

I hope all this is helpful. It really shook up everything we did and how we looked at advertising! It can be a hard pill to swallow when you have to analyse everything you’ve done up to this point but the important thing is not to take it personally, just learn from it. I think the fact that you’ve asked on this forum is really great and progressive.

Good luck!

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

apache — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 17:36:43 GMT

[quote userid="41931" url="~/001/nonclinical/occupational/f/employment/32279/recruitment---struggling-to-hire-vns/177628#177628"]unfortunately we are no longer able to be a training centre so have no choice but to try and recruit a QVN. When we were a bigger team its what we always did but financial struggles hit the charity sector followed by covid.[/quote]

Feel free to ignore - but why can you no longer be a training centre?

When we trained our first VN a vet was the clinical coach.

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Heather Bacon — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 01:23:49 GMT

I think that there is a shortage of nurses at the moment, same with vets. Can management increase the salary? offer part time and maybe look at getting a couple of part-timers, or train your own. Does the advert state what the nurses get to do? For example schedule 3 etc to help attract more people.

I think salary is a huge issue, and it is good to see that some places in the UK are offering more now due to demand.

I currently live in New Zealand and get paid about £24K a year here, which is at the lower end for the area and my experience. I would be lying if I said I hadn't thought about leaving the profession because of the salary.

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

jenni99 — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 19:27:35 GMT

Nurses are in short supply ATM. As are vets. :) These days no out of hours for nurses isn't such a rarity. Many corporates etc don't do OOHs Though I come from a 24/7 365 practice (yep - the only day we shut was Christmas - but we are still open - so OOHs to me is from 11pm to 6 am - but not if you've warned us first, or your patient is super cute. Or a cow. Or Sheep. Or horse.

Personally I think that the nurses are just not out there - I think we are asking too much before they even qualify - so then they have no resilience left . Cant get a RVN - well an SVN will do the job -- no SVN -- get a ACAW -- can't get a ACAW -- get a student on placement. - its all the wrong way round -- we are putting too much on from the start so when these wonderful enthusiastic, nurturing, exciting, keen humans when they get to qualify they have already had enough and have been damaged. . . . But a wage at least equal to ( or better than) a 16 year old Tesco shelf stacker might just help - - - -- a tiny bit

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Julia Wallis — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 21:32:44 GMT

Our work is very open with job adverts etc and getting feedback from the team about the job adverts we put out. Our most recent one said everything that makes us special as a team, we've included photos of our staff room with our photo boards of our baby scans/selfies of us with our patients etc All the job adverts I see are so boring and literally just copy and paste of each other- nothing stands out!

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Elaine Grierson — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 09:19:22 GMT

That's great thank you! :)

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Elaine Grierson — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 09:18:29 GMT

Thanks Karen, I think locally nurses are in very short supply. All practices in the area seem to be struggling and its not even easy to get locum cover. When I started nursing it also used to be the case that accommodation was available but yes you rarely see that now. We are a lovely practice to work at but nurses don't know that until they meet us and I think the salary is just not drawing them in when some other places are now offering higher salaries. It's really positive to get feedback from other nurses in or out of the profession so I can at least open up discussion at work :)

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Alice Weaver — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 09:18:03 GMT

I went back and screenshotted the adverts from the email that this thread appeared on (below). I didn’t click on the links so don’t know the benefits etc, but I think this should give you an idea of what candidates will be expecting.

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Elaine Grierson — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 09:11:03 GMT

Thanks Alice, I have actually edited it on the adverts to now say part time considered because I'd rather have someone for 2-3 days than no one at all. So far unfortunately that has still not sparked any interest. We do most of the blood work, IVs, fluids and x-rays but not any actual surgical procedures. Pay seems to be the over riding issue for so many people, whilst looking around myself in preparation for this recruitment I am still seeing places advertising for VNs at £20,000-£20,500 with OOH work. Quite incredible :(

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Alice Weaver — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 08:07:05 GMT

This is the million dollar question! I’m in a committee that is working to retain and attract RVNs and SVNs- I work for a (boo hiss) corporate in central london. Some of the points we have worked on in the past year are increasing CPD allowance, enhancing maternity leave conditions, recognising clinical coaches/supervisors, clarifying career paths/improving in house training. These are the points that my colleagues have suggested.

I work Monday-Friday with no OOH/on-call as a ‘mobile RVN’ within my organisation. Last month I started a new trial role of spending 2 days in practice and the other 3 days solely training and coaching students through NPL/ePortfolio. My job is a bit weird and I AM London-based, but I get paid more than your listing. I understand Bristol accommodation doesn’t come cheap either so this will highly likely be a bit of a sticking point for any potential applicants.

The RVNs I know who have left recently are going to referral centres. For those nurses they don’t state ‘pay’ as a main reason for leaving; they leave so they can concentrate on clinical nursing whereas my company is mainly general practice. The one RVN I know who left for a GP competitor ended up coming back after 18 months.

I guess what I’m saying is that maybe you should enhance your listing with what the role entails? Do you do lots of Schedule 3 work? Lots of nurses LOVE this and would flock to a position where they are consistently able to do stitch-ups/lump removals/consults without reception work/admin.

If your organisation is unable to make the salary higher maybe consider lowering it and making it a part time position? 2-3 days a week or the kind of hours that someone with young kids could handle- I don’t have kids so I don’t really know, but maybe fit around the school run?

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Sal the 1st — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 05:55:30 GMT

the way I see it this shortage is never going to go away, when I came into the job in the 80's there was a shortage of qualified nurses - nothing has changed. The choices are simplify the training (and that is very different to dumbing down) so that it becomes easier for nurses and practices to train or abandon the current qualification all together and make up staff shortfall with unqualified but house trained staff.

If we want qualified nurses we have to do something to make it happen, if we don't we get more of the same. It isn't rocket science. I have long said all the practices that contribute nothing to training nurses should pay an annual surcharge which offsets the cost to the practices that do. It might encourage a few more places to grow their own.

Locum nurses - they just aren't affordable. The only people really benefiting from locums are the agencies. Only last week I was stalked yet again by another agency offering me a long term locum or a permanent position - too right a permanent position would net them a nice little 7.5k finders fee and long term locum would earn me pretty much the hourly rate I am being paid in my current job and a hefty cut of my wage going into some umbrella account. I'm not looking for another job and certainly not to go back to the job I left last year - I left for a reason

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

HomerRVN — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 17:08:31 GMT

I am afraid I cannot offer any useful insight as to why Veterinary Nurses would not be applying, as your vacancy sounds fantastic. I had to stop working in private practice, after 30+ years due to injury/illness, but would have been honoured to work where animal welfare is still a priority, and nursing skills are prioritised over salesmanship.

I assume that there must be a shortage of RVN's in your area. Have you tried locus (Veterinary Employment Services (Ringwood) and A1used to provide excellent nurses, some of whom would then join the practice after being able to experience working conditions first. Good luck with the search.

Private practices often offered affordable/rent free accommodation when I started and couldn't afford rent, but this does not seem to be the case any more.

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Elaine Grierson — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 15:24:50 GMT

[quote userid="42362" url="~/001/nonclinical/occupational/f/employment/32279/recruitment---struggling-to-hire-vns/177627#177627"]Unfortunately with the cost of living at such an astronomical level, 20-24k in the south of England is simply not enough to comfortably live on. I speak as someone who has nursed for 8 years and has now left nursing for a non-clinical job, purely because I had huge money stress when I was a nurse, as about 90% of my salary went on rent and bills. I still keep an eye on job boards and I can see the average going rate is more like 25k-30k now for a qualified RVN, which I think is much more appropriate. I'm afraid a shorter working week isn't going to pay nurse's bills, despite how great the rest of the package sounds. Sorry to be so blunt but just putting my thoughts out there.[/quote]

HI Jess, thank you for your response. Sadly the salary is out of my hands and as a charity we are run by a board of trustees but i have said time and time again that we will struggle to recruit and salary is an issue. Across the board salary needs to go up and like you say a nice working week with no OOH etc wont pay the bills. Feedback like this is really helpful because it at least backs up what i have been saying :)

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Elaine Grierson — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 15:22:40 GMT

[quote userid="10972" url="~/001/nonclinical/occupational/f/employment/32279/recruitment---struggling-to-hire-vns/177626#177626"]

Not sure if helpful or not, but I feel the obligation on the profession is to train your own.

I'm sure I could find 10 willing students for each training place we have.

Even from day 1 they are useful and can help with the running of the practice. Not really 'fair' expecting other practices to train and then you simply recruit them

[/quote]

HI thank you for your response, I totally agree but unfortunately we are no longer able to be a training centre so have no choice but to try and recruit a QVN. When we were a bigger team its what we always did but financial struggles hit the charity sector followed by covid.

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

Jess Parkes — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 08:12:23 GMT

Unfortunately with the cost of living at such an astronomical level, 20-24k in the south of England is simply not enough to comfortably live on. I speak as someone who has nursed for 8 years and has now left nursing for a non-clinical job, purely because I had huge money stress when I was a nurse, as about 90% of my salary went on rent and bills. I still keep an eye on job boards and I can see the average going rate is more like 25k-30k now for a qualified RVN, which I think is much more appropriate. I'm afraid a shorter working week isn't going to pay nurse's bills, despite how great the rest of the package sounds. Sorry to be so blunt but just putting my thoughts out there.

RE: Recruitment - struggling to hire VNs

apache — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 21:46:23 GMT

Not sure if helpful or not, but I feel the obligation on the profession is to train your own.

I'm sure I could find 10 willing students for each training place we have.

Even from day 1 they are useful and can help with the running of the practice. Not really 'fair' expecting other practices to train and then you simply recruit them