Putting care into the creative of fulfilling careers

Like many sectors in the economy, attracting staff, and keeping them, is a major headache for the health service. The NHS has been facing critical staff shortages in certain roles for a number of years but these problems have exacerbated of late, seen to be fuelled by post-Brexit labour changes and the Covid-19 pandemic.

In addressing the challenges of staff supply, NHS organisations have had to become increasingly resourceful and creative in how they attempt to secure a skilled and sustainable workforce for the future.

It is one area where we have been able to help many community and hospital trusts, as well as local authorities, with the creative spark for their recruitment and retention campaigns. We are currently working with organisations nationwide on helping them address this issue – our latest link-up has seen us liaising with the NHS Wales Health Collaborative on their endoscopy nurse recruitment campaign.

For those unaware of what endoscopy is – it is a procedure where a long, thin, flexible tube that has a light and camera at one end is passed through your body. Endoscopy services play an essential part in investigating suspected cancer and other conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease. 

Some areas of the NHS are often seen as more ‘glamorous’ than others – think ‘ER’ or ‘Holby City’ but some might need their profile raising or misconceptions correcting. Endoscopy could possibly be seen as one of those areas – and in our discussions with contacts in Wales we discovered a whole range of benefits to working as a nurse in this discipline: including great team members, a more planned working day, the chance to provide vital physical and emotional care to patients, fewer distractions than in other parts of the hospital…

Based upon the primary research, we built a number of campaign branding options for NHS Wales Health Collaborative; creative that focused on aspects of the investigative nature of the work, on the benefits of working in the service, and of the vital nature of the work.

As I write this, the campaign work is still in development and we are very excited to see how the creative progresses, in partnership with the client. We have high hopes for the ideas and will be working to ensure that the final campaign implemented is not only eye-catching and thought-provoking but delivers results – both in terms of raising the profile of endoscopy nursing and encouraging as many applications as possible.

A core value of Touch Design is that we will only work on projects that matter, that add worth to the world. We are so pleased to be able to support the NHS in Wales on this vital work, helping find the right people for such hugely important roles. If your organisation similarly needs support on getting the message out and campaigning, give us a call.