Agency Nurses being furloughed...**Title edited by MNHQ**

[Idolikeanicepieceofcake]

My OH and I work in healthcare. He is a critical care nurse (working on bank and agency as we need one of us to have flexible working) and yet he was told last week that he is being furloughed as there is no work. My job is continuing as normal, and technically he doesn't need to work as I earn enough to support the family, but doesn't it seem crazy that the hospitals don't need extra staff at all? I have noticed that there are oodles of staff working in ITU at the moment, who have presumably been 'up-skilled' from other departments, but I am still surprised they don't need highly-trained and experienced nurses to be supporting them/looking after the most unwell patients. My OH has volunteered to go and work away in other hospitals, but so far they all have enough staff. On one hand I am proud that the NHS is managing this pandemic so well that they don't need to get extra staff in, but on the other I'm wondering whether we massively overestimated how awful COVID-19 was going to be on the health service. Have any other nurses been furloughed?

Wow the nasty attitude to bank staff on here is appalling. Bank staff dont get paid anymore than NHS staff. I left the NHS in 2013 after 33 years because of bullying. I was told I wasnt part of the team by a senior midwife . Despite being asked to do the theatre list that morning when the midwife allocated refused. Not everyone can work any shift , any day of the week. I had family members who had needs at that time that wouldnt allow it.

In our trust we have redeployed an enormous number of staff to the frontline, more than needed frankly. So, of course we don't need to use any agency staff when we've stopped doing routine and/or planned operations. The titles is hugely misleading, can't wait til the Daily Fail gets hold of this one FFS.

Agency workers are furloughed - why would supply nurses not be furloughed when supply teachers can be? Also, apart from money-saving, why would a trust use redeployed retired staff who might be working for moral reasons as opposed to supply staff who might really need the money?

I can't understand why people refuse to accept some wards are very quiet due to the current rules

She said he’s a critical care nurse. The NHS is not furloughing critical care nurses.

I've been very ill with Covid for nearly 6 weeks (2 weeks of those being extremely ill, including struggling to breathe) and I've come up against constant barriers while trying to get proper treatment from my GP, from 111 and A&E.

You might have been feeling crap at times and very frightened, but you have recovered without hospitalisation so how is it reasonable to say you have been denied necessary care? It would appear that the judgement that you didn’t need hospital care was correct.

It sounds like bank staff are denigrated the same way as supply teachers are. Which sucks because both are needed to keep systems going and there are genuine reasons people choose to do agency work.

People on zero hour contracts can be furloughed - just ask Martin Lewis. It would be better all round if the trust's ran their own bank staff like they used to.

It is the nursing agency that is telling the nurses on their books that they need to furlough. I should have put the title as 'Agency nurses on furlough...' and I apologise if people feel I was misleading them.
I really thought that at the beginning of this that the hospital wards and corridors would be overrun with unwell patients, and that we wouldn't have enough staff to care for everyone properly. I am glad that this is not the case.

I’m thinking of naming my baby boy Charlie, is this a good name that won’t effect him later in life?

I think 'agency' is the problem here...qualified ITU staff that are bank/ agency are paid really well, so while other nurses have been redeployed from other areas he is not needed...why would they pay someone nearly double the money when they can get contracted staff from elsewhere for less

It may just be that having unskilled their own staff hospitals now don’t need agency staff that cost far more.

Up skilled not unskilled

On the unit I work, staff are being asked to take annual leave.

The number of patients we are seeing is dramatically less than normal.

Our unit comprises of 6 different wards and two of them have been closed down because there is just no need for them.

It such a strange atmosphere.

Financially makes sense to redeploy staff than pay bank rates. That’s the risk of bank work hopefully he will get shifts soon.

The title needs amending - it’s not true, just an attempt to bait people 🙄

Sorry have not read all comments so may have been said already. Bank Nurses do not get a higher rate of pay. They get same rate of pay as their equivalent band in permanent employment. Bank nurses are not agency nurses. Having worked as a bank nurse for a few years I used to get annoyed that people assumed I was earning ££££ more than permanent staff

Also the trust I work in continued all cancer care, diagnostics etc. Only routine surgery/appointments were postponed. We’ve already restarted routine work.

Please don’t scapegoat the nhs, the decisions were not made by us.
How was the nhs not there for you? People have put their lives at risk, my colleague has lost her life to covid - likely due to high exposure. So don’t come up with crap like the nhs wasn’t there for me.

In Simple's case yes she seems to be recovering without the need for hospital. Thankfully. It's a Russian roulette approach though and others have died because of it.

The non urgent Covid wards are quiet out of necessity. To avoid contagion. We're in a pandemic. Non urgent work had to be postponed. It's a highly contagious virus. One Covid infected patient or HCP is very likely to spread it throughout the departments. Then nobody gets any treatment for anything because staff are off sick, some like Simple for weeks and weeks, and there's no capacity for all the patients.

I work as a bank nhs a and e nurse as my main health visiting contract is very part time. My work has completely dried up as so many have been redeployed etc and a and e s are empty which is good but there s definitely some truth in this

Sorry truth in nurses struggling to find work not being furloughed not sure about that

Glad to see the thread title has been amended

I see there is still a lot of misinformation surrounding furlough. Furlough is when a company lay off staff due to economic downturn.

The job retention scheme brought in by the Chancellor was to enable companies to apply to the fund to pay their furloughed staff.

Any agency can furlough their payroll just like any other company.

Furlough was not used in employment law prior to the pandemic. The job retention scheme was brought into protect furloughed staff from redundancy.

Agency that pay their staff through PAYE are entitled to apply to the job retention scheme.

The OP was right.

Thank you BakedCam for the clarification

The OP said her DH was bank and agency and critical care. They also implied staff aren't needed because they 'overestimated' how awful COVID would be. That isn't what happened and it's surprising that someone who works in the NHS and is married to a critical care nurse doesn't understand how staff are being redeployed, how government policy has massively impacted admissions, etc.

Covid impacted admissions. The government tried to cope with it and the NHS deployed staff. The government didn’t tell them how to cope or how to redeploy staff.

She asked if it had been over-estimated to which there is a raft of questions all over this forum asking similar questions around nres that wards are empty.

I don't get the pile on. Why not just ask people if the information in the OP doesn't stack up?