Nursing from the casual pool: Focus group study to explore the experiences of casual nurses

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• The lack of support for education was a universal complaint. The nurses from the casual pool are always asked to stay on the ward while permanent nurses are sent to in-service meetings and education sessions. One nurse said that she had not been to one in-service in the 10 years she had worked with the casual pool. The participants gave some good ideas abo

• Even complaints about their work are vague. They suspect they might get the blame for things when they are not there and there are the odd occasions when they might be told on the spot that they have done the wrong thing. However, these incidents are not motivated by a desire to help the casual nurse to improve. This does not appear to bother the nurses except inasmuch as they do not feel appreciated. It does not appear to concern them that they are missing an opportunity for professional development. It appears that work with the casual pool is not associated with professional ambition. DI

• Professional feedback was another issue that is absent. Besides the odd ‘thank you’ at the end of a shift or flattering invitations to ‘come and work with us’, they are not given feedback on their performance. . . .

• access to information to enable them to provide individualized care to patients, attitudes from the staff that make them feel welcome and safe to ask questions, clear instructions regarding ward policies and procedures, and a fair work allocation that gives them time to work safely. The nurses in the casual pool are clearly in a prime position to assess the ability of clinical teams to provide this type of context in which nurses from the casual pool can work comfortably. Indeed, we would argue that not only do casual nurses need these conditions, but nursing students, new graduates and new staff (including the interdisciplinary team) need them as well. A formal system for enabling casual nurses to provide clinical teams with feedback about their performance in the area would be useful for high performing teams in terms of promoting their area and for poorly performing teams to know where they might start to change practices. Recommendations made as a result of this study were:

• Personal development is another reason for choosing to work with the casual pool and included time for study: Enrolled Nurse (EN) enrolled at university to become Registered Nurse (RN) and RNs enrolled at university to change careers. Keeping their ‘hand in’ is the reason

• There

• There are long portions of the text devoted to complaints about the lack of opportunity to go to in-service sessions, but very little acknowledgement of professional responsibility for person