Fixed term contract nhs

[megrob]

Has anyone took a job offer on a fixed term contract and it not been extended in the nhs? please tell me your experience of the reasons why and what happened next jobwise? did u become unemployed?

Hi, yes it's happened to me twice, first was very straight forward in that it was a maternity leave cover and the person came back as expected, second bit more complex as the reason for the FTC was that the team was going through a restructure (but was told when I accepted the job, don't worry, there'll be a permanent job for you) - that all went a bit hairy as the restructure ended up deleting all the jobs at my banding in the team and everyone had to choose whether to apply for a limited number of promotions or accept redeployment at a lower grade, I was encouraged to apply for the promotion but didn't feel quite right about going for it in competition with permanent staff, several of whom who had been there a long time, but clearly I wasn't very keen on dropping down a grade either - so I decided to just run out the rest of my FTC and look for other jobs. Both times I found another job in the NHS at the same band without too much trouble (one time internal to the original trust, one time with another trust). If you have a relatively in-demand/common skillset and either live in an area with multiple trusts within reach or can be flexible on location, it's usually quite possible to find other jobs within the NHS fairly easily although of course you do have the hassle of having to do applications and go to interviews, but generally if the FTC is a good development/career option for you I would usually advise people to go for it - obviously it's different if you work in an extremely niche field and/or you are limited to only being able to work at one specific trust for commute or other reasons in which case it probably isn't worth giving up a permanent job as of course there are no guarantees...

@maxelly was there ever a gap in your employment or when the person on maternity returned did u automatically go into ur secondment role? can i ask what banding were these and what were the roles?