Barts & The London NHS Trust are undergoing the largest and most complex hospital redevelopment project in the country. The Royal London will be Britain’s biggest new hospital, and one of London’s leading trauma and emergency care centres.
Barts & The London already provide one of the largest A&E and ICU departments in London, with 161,598 patients attending A&E in 2007 / 2008. They handle some of the most serious trauma cases from the Capital and receive patients from three air ambulance services. The Health Commission commended them for their provision of services. The new building will increase the number of A&E and ICU beds at The Royal London leading to a need to recruit more specialist nurses.
It is particularly difficult to recruit for A&E and ICU roles with nurses in short supply for these positions. Barts & The London commissioned recruitment communications partner TMP Worldwide to create a strategic recruitment campaign that would quickly fill the specialist nurse roles.
To understand what attracts nurses to Barts and the London, TMP undertook a briefing with the Head of Nursing and the matrons in charge of ICU and A&E. These helped to inform a media strategy and creative approach.
TMP recognised that as Barts & The London is a large centre for A&E the recruitment campaign needed to focus on the career potential available. Handling the variety and severity of trauma cases and the excellent recovery rates provide an attractive career path for nurses.
The campaign needed to be high impact. To achieve the right affect for the creative, TMP used a make-up artist who replicated the injuries of a recovering accident victim. To keep the costs down, TMP used one of their own employees as a model for the photo shoot.
The final result was highly impactful and bespoke to Barts & The London. The strategy of promoting the career opportunities as well as working in a new hospital were highly effective in attracting quality candidates from across the country.
A print campaign ran in the Nursing press and in the Metro and Evening Standard. This was supported by an online campaign on GumTree and the Royal College of Nursing website as well as the NHS Jobs website.
A campaign site was developed that expanded on the opportunities available in the two units. This supported the creative, enabling the print campaign to be copy light and directing interested applicants to the website.
Working as an A&E or ICU nurse is seen as a strong career path. The 20 jobs included Band 5 roles for nurses who are looking to specialise at this stage of their career. Barts & The London were also looking for experienced nurses for Band 6 and Band 7 positions.
The campaign launched on the 14th January with an application deadline of 13th February. Initial response especially for the A&E positions was strong. A top-up campaign was run in early February to stimulate further interest for the ICU positions.
The campaign generated 1,003 visitors to the campaign website http://www.bartsdothis.co.uk/home.asp. 98% reached the site directly and 91% of those were new applicants demonstrating that the campaign reached the targeted audience.
To date 13 positions have been filled with a further assessment centre being run at the beginning of April 2009.
Melissa Harries, HR Account Manager / Business Partner of Barts & The London NHS Trust, said: “We have worked with TMP Worldwide for a long time and we wanted this campaign to demonstrate the critical care and trauma aspect of The Royal London Hospital. TMP understood our brief and their creative input was invaluable. We have received a number of quality applications from both A&E and ITU nurses and the campaign continues to progress.”