PROFILING FLEXIBLE NURSING STAFF - BANK NURSES IN SCOTLAND

Nurse banks are locally organised ''in house'' sources of temporary nu rsing staff. This paper reports on a survey of nurses working on three nurse banks in the National Health Service in Scotland. A total of 20 3 nurses responded to the survey, which revealed marked differences in the profile of the nurses working on each of the banks, in terms of a ge, biographical details, career plans and work commitments. Main issu es for management revealed by the survey were the need for good commun ication with temporary staff and high levels of reported dissatisfacti on with access to training opportunities. The paper concludes that the re is no ''standard'' model of a nurse bank in the NHS in Scotland and no standard profile of bank nurses.