In a session on leadership, Helen Lycett from West London NHS Trust looked at some of the challenges of recruiting and retaining occupational therapists within London and her own trust.
With a 30 per cent vacancy rate, she said that there are a number of key drivers in the capital city, including the extremely high housing costs, the abolishment of bursaries, and the inherent job competition within the capital city.
Speaking about her own borough, she said: ‘Housing costs and rent are out of reach for most band fave occupational therapists, meaning many people have to live out of the area and face long commutes to work.’
She added: ‘Our local cohort was only 50 per cent full for the 2017/18 year, which we will feel the impact of in a few years, and London is a busy place with a lot of competition.’
IN 2018, the trust has a 28 per cent vacancy rate - in line with that of the rest of the city - and Helen knew that they had to ‘start thinking differently’.
With improvement adviser training under her belt, giving her experience of the Model for Improvement and PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Ask) cycles Helen set out to reduce the trust’s vacancy rate to 10 per cent by March 2019.
Wth buy in from HR, they trialled using Google Ad Words to help with recruitment - a tool that she says ‘was not that expensive’, alongside a number of other initiatives, including recruitment days.
In terms of retention, they implemented a band five and six AHP development programme, to compliment the existing preceptorship programme.
The overall impact was that the trust achieved its aim and after the nine month period, had reduced the vacancy rate from 28 per cent to a remarkable nine per cent.
Her key message to others struggling with the same situation is that ‘no idea is a bad idea’, that staff should ‘ring fence time’ for quality improvement projects, and that ‘no one thing works in isolation’.
With that final point in mind, Helen says the trust is now looking at how it can work more collaboratively across the system to start to change things across London.