Today is the third annual National Healthcare Support Workers’ Day and provides an opportunity to reflect on their vital contribution to patient care. Throughout my nursing career, I have worked alongside incredible healthcare support workers whose expertise, care and compassion is remarkable, delivering personalised care in often difficult circumstances to patients, their family, and carers.

Healthcare Support Workers’ Day offers us an opportunity to recognise and celebrate this often-unseen contribution and we’ll be marking the day by shining a spotlight on some of the planned developments for our unregistered workforce.

A lot of work has been going on over the last 12 months in relation to agreeing a new inpatient skill mix which includes a small number of Band 2 development posts on each ward with all other support worker posts being at a Band 3. The Band 2 and 3 Job descriptions have been amended to reflect a difference in knowledge and skills alongside the process for ensuring the uplift can be applied in a fair and equitable way. Last week a project lead for the Support Worker Pathway was successfully recruited whose role will be to support the implementation of the inpatient support worker uplift from Band 2 to Band 3. We aim to have this in place for February 2023, please look out for the engagement events in January the process and future plans will be discussed.

We recognise that often our local community is underrepresented within the organisation due to not having the required knowledge, skills and experience for the support worker role. Our ambition is that the entry level posts will act as a gateway into the organisation, and we are able to provide a career pathway from Band 2 to Chief Executive. Over the next 12 months we will be further developing our approach to the recruitment, induction, preceptorship and the personal development of Healthcare Support Workers.

So today let’s take this opportunity to celebrate the difference Healthcare Support Workers make to the lives of both patients and staff and ensure that we all take the time to appreciate them.

Simon Barnitt
Head of Nursing