Profiling “flexible” nursing staff: bank nurses in Scotland Original Research Article

Nurse banks are locally organised “in house” sources of temporary nursing staff. This paper reports on a survey of nurses working on three nurse banks in the National Health Service in Scotland. A total of 203 nurses responded to the survey, which revealed marked differences in the profile of the nurses working on each of the banks, in terms of age, biographical details, career plans and work commitments. Main issues for management revealed by the survey were the need for good communication with temporary staff and high levels of reported dissatisfaction with access to training opportunities. The paper concludes that there is no “standard” model of a nurse bank in the NHS in Scotland and no standard profile of bank nurses.