Nursing Services of the UK saves South African Football Team

Nursing Services of the UK stepped in and paid for the air travel for the South African football team today when their government funding was suddenly withdrawn for the flight of the 10-man squad to the Homeless World Cup in Italy next week. Once homeless herself, managing director Penny Streeter’s company A24 Group is a major investor in South Africa.

Penny Streeter lived in a homeless refuge with her three children before starting her company in 1996. She is founder and managing director of A24 Group, a medical staffing agency with a turnover of £70 million (year to June 2009), and no loans or external investors. The company opened offices in South Africa in 2004 and launched an £11 million investment programme. The Homeless World Cup, Milan 2009, runs from 6th to 13thSeptember, with 500 players from 48 nations. An estimated 100 million people worldwide are homeless (Source: United Nations Commission on Human Rights, 2005). www.homelessworldcup.org "Well I read that funding by the City of Cape Town stopped because of huge demands on their budgets in the recession, so I felt I had to step in. Homelessness is a terrible waste of good people, usually overtaken by events with which they just can’t cope - in the UK, one in four of the homeless are ex-military. It's a problem which should get more attention, given British involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq," said Penny Streeter. South Africa hosted the Homeless World Cup in Cape Town 2006. The domestic league now involves 100 volunteers and activities in various communities of Cape Town and the Western Cape focusing on education, social support and HIV awareness for street children. The league has grown to involve over 700 players in 55 teams: 50 per cent of the players are currently living on the street, a number of them are in drug rehabilitation programmes and others in institutions for street people. SAHSS (South African Homeless Street Soccer) has successfully used football to foster healthy individual development, teach positive values and life skills, strengthen education, and prevent disease through education (particularly HIV/AIDS). For more information:- View Contact Details You can also visit our Facebook Page or Follow us on Twitter Follow the team on the Blog: blog.a24group.co.uk For further media information please click here

A third of nurses may refuse to have the swine flu jab

According to a poll by 'Nursing Times' magazine, one third of UK nurses may refuse to have the swine flu jab. Of 1,500 readers, 30 per cent would not say 'yes' to the vaccine, while 33 per cent said 'maybe'. Just 37 per cent said that they would definitely have the jab.

Of those who said they would refuse the jab, 60 per cent said their main reason was concern about the safety of the vaccine. A further 31 per cent said they did not consider the risks to their health from swine flu to be great enough, while 9 per cent thought they would not be able to take time off work to get immunised. Some 91 per cent described themselves as frontline nurses. Professor David Salisbury, the Department of Health's director of immunisation, said it was unfortunate nurses would 'knowingly leave themselves at risk'. The survey comes after health chiefs said doctors should watch out for cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome when the vaccine is introduced in October. The syndrome, which affects around 1,500 people a year in the UK, attacks the nervous system and can result in temporary paralysis. News from Nursing Services of the UK For more information:- View Contact Details You can also visit our Facebook Page or Follow us on Twitter Blog: blog.a24group.co.uk For further media information please click here

Nursing Agencies' Medical Staff in Peak Demand as Full-Time Vacancies Soar

The Vacancies for nurses, midwives, hospital doctors and dentists in the UK have increased for the first time in five years Increasing patient demand, the lack of training places, staff retirement and changes in immigration laws are all thought to responsible for the situation.

With the pressures on full-time staff, agency nurses are in peak demand by Nursing Services of the UK. The agency has now recruited dozens of additional compliance staff to assist the process of registration and ensure that candidates can be available for work as soon as possible. The agency has one of the most advanced on-line registration systems of any UK nursing agency to enable medical staff to manage their own availability and receive notification of more work, more easily than ever before, according to the agency. Vacant nursing jobs increased from 2.5 to 3.1 per cent – of which 0.7 per cent were long-term, up from 0.5 per cent in the previous year. The chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing has expressed concern about long-term vacancies: even unfilled short-term vacancies leave nurses under unsustainable pressure, he said, with higher workloads, leaving staff too busy to provide the standard of care they want to offer. Other Medical Staffing News:- New European rules limiting junior doctors to 48 hours a week, which recently came into force, are also thought to have added to the pressure on staffing for healthcare providers. Senior doctors have called for the restrictions to be suspended until after the NHS has dealt with the H1N1 outbreak in the UK. The latest vacancy figures, which look at jobs unfilled on March 31 this year, found that over 5 per cent of all NHS medical posts, which includes hospital doctors and dentists, were vacant. This is up from 3.6 per cent the previous year. The proportion which had been vacant for three months – which is considered an indication of hard-to-fill posts - was 1.5 per cent, up from 0.9 per cent. Meanwhile, vacancies among GPs rose 1.2 to 1.6 per cent, although long-term vacancies remained broadly the same. For more information:- View Contact Details You can also visit our Facebook Page or Follow us on Twitter Blog: blog.a24group.co.uk For further media information please click here

Measles and Mumps requirements for Nursing Agency Staff

Agency nurses working in the UK must be fully compliant with Department of Health Measles and Mumps requirements to be eligible for work with the A24 Group. The Department of Health has now written to Trusts to inform them that all healthcare professionals should be able to prove immunity. Visit www.nsofuk.com

Candidates will need to produce written evidence in the form of a compliant certificate of fitness. This requires that candidates have the following evidence available: proof of positive antibody for Measles and Rubella; or that they have received two MMR Vaccinations; or that they have received a series of two Measles, Rubella and also Mumps Vaccinations (so 6 in total).   Also, if a candidate has a positive antibody for Measles and Rubella but his or her mumps are negative or equivocal then appropriate action must be taken as mumps immunity is still necessary. For more details contact us on this web site: www.nsofuk.com   The latest figures show the uptake of the MMR triple vaccine in the community has risen slightly to 89.6% from 83.4%. However, they are still a long way off the 95% level needed to provide "herd immunisation" and prevent the disease taking hold in the community among unvaccinated people. Some states in the USA now have a requirement for children to be vaccinated before they start at school. The country has a 99% uptake of MMR among school entry children. For more information:- View Contact Details You can also visit our Facebook Page or Follow us on Twitter Blog: blog.a24group.co.uk For further media information please click here

NSSA launches New Nursing Agency in the UK

NSSA (Nursing Services of South Africa) has launched a new nursing agency for the recruitment and placement of nurses in the UK. Particular areas of specialisation for Nursing Services of the UK include its 24-7 service 365 days of the year: agency nurses and healthcare providers can contact a member of the agency support team 24 hours a day. The agency has invested in one of the most advanced ICT systems to manage compliance, supported by a specialist in-house team to follow up references and verify credentials. The ICT system is used to ensure a fast and accurate match of a candidate’s qualifications, experience and location with the needs of each healthcare provider who requires staff.

Once medical staff have met compliance requirements, Nursing Services of the UK provides personnel for temporary and longer term assignments in NHS Trusts, private hospitals, GP surgeries and with other healthcare service providers nationwide. Established over 60 years ago, NSSA has long experience as one of the leading nursing agencies in the recruitment, management and assignment of medical staff in the demanding healthcare staffing environment of South Africa. NSSA was acquired in 2006 by Ambition 24hours and the A24 Group, amongst the UK's most innovative temporary nursing agencies. The A24 Group was the first healthcare agency in the UK, and then South Africa, to offer a 24-7 service, 365 days a year. The agency has completed the biggest ICT support project of its kind in the sector, say the Directors: "We have brought to the industry all the benefits of the latest technology for the efficient and safe management, monitoring and verification of medical staffing people. This means that we can instantly match our clients needs with the most suitable, qualified nurses, and enable candidates to better manage their work-life balance through a host of on-line facilities. Technology underpins the helpful and friendly human interface that we can offer through our trained, experienced team 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. "We have a firm policy of not seeking to recruit staff from Africa for our UK operations. This is because we hear at first hand from doctors and nurses the consequences of this type of activity by staffing agencies and employers from developed countries - not only recruiters in the UK, but also those in the USA, Ireland, Canada and Australia in particular. Our goal is to ensure that we can bring our international experience in health staffing to alleviate the staffing issues here in the UK." Nursing Services of the UK is now registering nurses to fill a wide range of vacancies immediately throughout the UK, for all grades of nurses. For more information:- View Contact Details You can also visit our Facebook Page or Follow us on Twitter Blog: blog.a24group.co.uk For further media information please click here