Medacs Theatre Nurses may have spotted that we now have some noticeably different weekend work available as part of our new surgical insourcing services.
Insourcing roles offer you a great opportunity to build your experience in a new and fast-growing area and are paid in a totally different way to typical agency nursing shifts.
What is Insourcing?
Insourcing of clinical services, or NHS insourcing, is a huge growth area right now because it has a key part to play in reducing the growing elective care backlog. The NHS waiting list is now over 6 million with some patients waiting up to two years for life-changing surgical procedures.
Insourcing providers support NHS trusts to increase the number of procedures they can do in a week by utilising NHS operating theatres at weekends and drafting in specialist surgical teams.
As a framework-approved insourcing provider, Medacs sources full surgical teams for our clients, and we plan and manage all the surgical procedures, with the help of a highly experienced team of insourcing experts and our established Clinical Governance team.
How is Insourcing work different to agency nurse jobs?
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Block bookings with the same team
Each of our NHS clients has tasked us with sourcing a full team of surgical and recovery specialists, willing to work weekends. A team typically includes Consultants (Anaesthetists and Specialist Surgeons), Operating Department Practitioners (ODPs), Scrub Nurses, Recovery Nurses, Surgical First Assistants, Theatre Support Workers and admin staff.
Continuity of care is very important, and we want to foster a good team ethic, so we prefer to offer our theatre nurses block bookings/long lines of work at the same location for several months. This means everyone gets used to working with each other and the whole team are familiar with the theatre setup and trust procedures.
Like a football team, we also have a ‘bench’ and a rotational system, so nurses are not expected to work every single consecutive weekend, unless they want to. -
How much nurses get paid through an incentivised pay system
Nursing pay for Insourcing work is based on a daily rate (typically circa £300 for a qualified nurse) with productivity incentives on top. These incentives give nurses the opportunity to super-charge their earnings.
Bonus incentives are based on a points system and applied to the whole team depending on the number of procedures they complete in a day.
So, for example, if the plan for a daily theatre session is to complete 12 operations and that is what the insourcing team does, every qualified nurse will take home the standard daily pay of £300.
However, if after completing those 12, the team agrees that more procedures can be safely done that day, each team member earns more based on a ‘points-based’ system, depending on the type and complexity of additional procedures done. So in the case of a gynaecology session, one hysterectomy is worth 4 points and each point is worth £12.50. If one more hysterectomy is done that day, each qualified nurse takes home an extra £50. Typically, our insourcing nurses are currently earning in the region of £53 per hour based on this system. -
Rewarding work (comes with a mascara warning)
Our insourcing nurses say they are finding the work very enjoyable so far. It is especially rewarding to see vulnerable patients (often young children or adults in chronic pain) getting their long-overdue operations, most of which are utterly life-changing for them and their families. We’ve seen even the most hardened of nurses with happy tears, witnessing the impact of their work first-hand.
Instead of working a few hours in a less familiar theatre environment, staff also see the patient journey from start to finish, which is much more satisfying, especially when they know they have a clear role to play in a cohesive and efficient team effort.
Interested in getting involved in Insourcing?
If you are a theatre nurse and would like to join our insourcing teams, we currently have weekend work available in the Midlands and East of England. Equally we can offer standard agency theatre shifts during the week in a nationwide range of locations, also with some enhanced rates on offer. All our theatre nurses get support from our dedicated Theatre Booking Team and are encouraged to sign up for long lines of work.
For more information email nursejobs@medacs.com or call us on 01785 256434.
