Our response to COVID-19

Time to Read

4 minutes

Date

17 March

Category

Blog

About The Guild

COVID

The health of our nurses is our absolute priority. If you work for the Scottish Nursing Guild, please take note of the following information:

It is absolutely essential you stay up to date with Government COVID-19 advice

Government guidance on self-isolation is updated daily. It is more important than ever that you stay updated with the latest Government advice on the signs and symptoms of COVID-19 and self-isolation guidance to prohibit the further spread of this virus. you can view the latest UK advice here and the Irish advice here. If you live and/or work in the UK, we recommend you sign up to the daily email alerts to ensure you don’t miss out.

Remember, if you, a member of your immediate family or anyone you have been in close contact with has recently returned from any of the specified countries or areas, then you must follow Government advice and self-isolate, if necessary. You can view the UK advice on self-isolation here and the Irish advice here.

Support

We know that some of our nurses have permanent posts as well as working for us and that some nurses will also have insurance cover for periods when you may not be able to work. We are also acutely aware that not everyone does. We know that our nurses are worried about having to self-isolate or becoming ill as a result of COVID-19, or even being out of work to care for loved ones who have contracted COVID-19 and the financial impact this will have.

We want to assure our nurses that if you do not have access to any financial support or insurance and you are unable to work due to COVID-19, there are a number of options available to you, in addition, to support measures the government may put in place. The Scottish Nursing Guild will stand by you at this time. if you are suffering financial hardship as a direct result of COVID-19, please click here to find out what support is available to you.

Cavell Nurses’ Trust – UK nurses
Remember, support is also available from our friends at the Cavell Nurses’ Trust. Sadly, their telephone service isn’t available at the moment but you can still complete a financial support application online or email admin@cavellnursestrust.org if you’d rather speak to someone. If you notice that a colleague is feeling the strain, emotionally or financially, please tell them about the Cavell Nurses’ Trust, they are here to help.

Emotional support

You can access counselling and information services through our Employee Assistance Programme. This service is provided by Care First and facilitated by Aviva. It’s a free service, designed to provide you with professional, independent and impartial, information, support and counselling. The programme is a confidential service available 24-hours a day, 365 days a year. You can reach them on 0800 015 5630 which is a freephone number.

Factsheets and clinical guidance

We have put together a suite of factsheets and clinical guidance for our agency workers. Please take time to familiarise yourself with this information. If you have any COVID-19 related clinical questions, please refer to these factsheets in the first instance. Read more here.

Follow our blog

Stay up to date with our latest COVID-19 support and advice through our blog. We’ve got plenty of information to support you and your loved ones. Everything from looking after your mental health, keep the kids entertained, as well as travel and accommodation guidance if you’re planning on working away. Stay tuned here.

Contacting us

We will continue to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can contact us on our regular telephone lines, but we do expect to be busier than usual. In the event you cannot reach us straight away, please send an email to callcentre@nursingguild.com. Whilst we work remotely, we may call from numbers that look different. Please do not call us back on these numbers – continue to call us on our usual lines. In addition, we’ll be unable to transfer any calls to other departments so please make sure you call the correct line.

Giving availability is more important than ever

We expect to be super busy over the coming weeks. Please make sure your availability is up to date on Quick Nurse and use the app to book your shifts. There will be lots of Hero shifts available so if you can work at super short-notice, remember you’ll earn an extra 20%.

Can you work in the community?

Public health bodies are encouraging increased community-based health support during the COVID-19 outbreak. We expect our community work to increase over the coming weeks. If you’re willing and able to work community shifts, please email community@nursingguild.com for Scotland and nicommunity@nursingguild.com for Northern Ireland, and we’ll be in touch.

If you have any further questions, please check out our FAQs .

Finally, please take care ❤

The coming weeks and months are likely to push us all to our limits. We need to support one another as much as possible to get through this. Please look after yourself and your fellow nurses. We are all in this together.