We wanted to understand how we can best deploy and retain our most experienced mental health nurses.
We know that mental health nurses in the last third of their career can bring their experience, expertise and skills to bear in a unique way. We also know that these nurses may have different needs, desires and challenges that organisations are not always equipped to fully understand.
We therefore developed a toolkit, bringing together best practice from across England to help employers understand how they can get the best out of these nurses. At the same time, we believed that by doing this we would help these nurses feel valued and supported thereby encouraging them to stay and making the NHS a better place to work.