100% funding available to help recruit Trainee Nursing Associates into your nursing teams

Below is a letter from Health Education England, to be distributed to all Practices across Mid and South Essex Health & Care Partnership:

100% funding available to help recruit Trainee Nursing Associates into your nursing teams

We would like to inform you about an exciting new opportunity to help increase the capacity of your general practice nursing teams.

As a response to the growing demands in Primary Care, General Practice Nurses (GPNs) are embracing some activities that were traditionally the domain of GPs and taking on advanced practice activities.

Increasingly, Nursing Associates are now bridging the gap between health care support workers and GPNs, helping to meet the changing health and care needs of patients and the public. They are bringing a breadth of knowledge and skill to the routine work in general practice, that we would now like to maximise on within the East of England.

It takes 2 years to train a Nursing Associate, once qualified, they are regulated and registered by the NMC which includes registration, revalidation and fitness to practice.

Once registered as a Nursing Associate after completing their training, they are:

• Well placed to help with some of the routine General Practice work, releasing the GPNs to do the advanced practice skills in your practice.
• Trained to deliver care across all age ranges and across all four fields of nursing (adult, child, mental health and learning disability) which provides experience in a variety of clinical contexts. This is hugely beneficial in general practice settings as they can undertake delegated tasks such as wound care, suture removal, health checks, vaccinations (flu, Covid, Vitamin B12 etc), perform cervical screening and support with managing long term conditions.

This should in turn, lead to an increased pool of highly skilled Nursing Associates and help address the current and future workforce needs in primary care. 

By agreeing to employ a Trainee Nursing Associate and for committing to provide a suitable learning environment, practices will receive the following (where available):

• ARRS funding which covers salary costs. The updated GP contract deal provided a legal entitlement to 100% reimbursement for an estimated 9,000 FTEs in 2020/21 under the ARRS. Trainee Nursing Associates will be reimbursed up to a maximum annual amount of £25,671 per FTE (also subject to the role meeting the minimum requirements set out in the DES) rising to £26,000 in 2023/24.
• Educational fees will be paid in full through use of apprenticeship levy funding.
• £4000 per year per Trainee Nursing Associate, £8000 in total from HEE will be available for the employing practice to provide appropriate support, supervision and mentorship of the Trainee Nursing Associate. This is a critical component, as we want to ensure practice nurses have the skills, time and confidence they need to provide support and mentorship for the future generations of nursing associates in general practice and to inspire them to progress if they want to, in becoming a GPN.

Many experienced Healthcare Support Workers working in general practice are keen to embark on Nursing Associate Training. You may already have a Healthcare Support Worker in your practice who would be interested in undertaking the course and we would like to work with your Training Hub to support you through the initial stages of the process to help enroll them on a course and ensure that all the steps are taken to ensure the funding processes are in place.

If you do not have a Healthcare Support Worker wishing to undertake the training, there is an opportunity for you to support a Trainee Nursing Associate on a 2-year fixed term contract, for the duration of their training. Their salary costs would be met through the ARRS funding (commensurate with Agenda for Change Band 3) and they would be supernumerary throughout. The Nursing Team at Health Education England will support the PCN with a virtual recruitment process in collaboration with Indeed to ensure a high caliber of candidates are appointed. We would hope that the registered Nursing Associate would remain in employment in your practice after this time, however this is not a compulsory element to agreeing to support a Trainee Nursing Associate. With this offer, the Trainee Nursing Associates must have started a HEI programme in between September and December 2021.

We are currently seeking PCNs and Practices interested in this initiative and whether you would be happy to offer employment for one or more of these Trainee Nursing Associates.

If you would like to find out more about this exciting initiative, or express your interest, please email [email protected], by Monday 17^th May.