To supply temporary or contract nursing staff in Northern Ireland, your agency must be registered with the RQIA which regulates nearly all care settings and services in Northern Ireland. This will be a pre-requisite for HSCNI and other frameworks for provision of agency nurses in Northern Ireland, so it’s a critical accreditation for your agency to have if you wish to supply there.
The registration process starts with the requirement to complete and submit extensive documentation to enable you to apply to register your Responsible Person, Registered Manager and the agency itself. This involves completing application forms, a statement of purpose (in alignment with their requirements) and providing multiple policies (in alignment with Appendix 3 of the Nursing Agencies Minimum Standards). Details of how to register and the application forms to be completed can be found on the following link: https://www.rqia.org.uk/what-we-do/register/how-to-register-with-rqia/
In addition to filling in the application forms, you will need to provide the following:
Statement of Purpose
This document will include details about your organisation (constitution, organisational structure, aims/objectives, philosophy of care, services provided and settings supplied) and operational policies/procedures (management and financial control, insurance arrangements, recruitment procedures, safeguarding, training/development, record keeping, notification of reportable events, and complaints).
Policies
The following policies and procedures are associated with the minimum standards and are also required to be submitted with your application:
- Absence of the registered manager
- Accidents and adverse incidents
- Accounting and financial control procedures
- Clinical nursing procedures
- Complaints
- Completion of case records
- Confidentiality
- Confirmation with NMC of nurses’ registration status
- Consent
- Dealing with alert letters issued by DHSSPS and NMC
- Disclosure of patient information
- General communications arrangements
- Infection prevention and control
- Inspections of the nursing agency
- Insurance arrangements
- International recruitment of agency nurses
- Management, control and monitoring of the nursing agency
- Management of records and information
- Managing service contracts
- Matching skills and expertise of nurses to the requirements of placements
- Monitoring and auditing the quality of services
- Moving and handling
- Obtaining comments from people who use the nursing agency
- Occupational health arrangements
- Operational policy
- Orientation and induction for newly appointed agency staff and nurses
- Pre-employment health assessment for nurses
- Providing 24 hour support for patients in their own homes and agency nurses
- Protection of vulnerable adults and safeguarding children
- Recruitment of staff
- Quality improvement
- Reporting arrangements to the registered person.
- Reporting, recording and notifying accidents, incidents, infectious diseases and deaths inc. RIDDOR arrangements
- Review and revision of policies and procedures
- Review and revision of service user’s guide
- Reviews and reassessment of nurses
- Risk assessment and management
- Smoking
- Staff induction
- Staff discipline and grievance
- Staff meetings
- Staff records
- Staff training and development
- Supply and placement of nurses
- Suspected, alleged or confirmed instances of abuse
- Uniforms for agency nurses
- Whistle blowing
Once your submission is complete, you send it to the RQIA who will evaluate the written application, documents and policies for compliance. Once that stage is complete, they will undertake a full audit, and when your registration is successfully completed, you will be re-audited annually.
Brunton Bid Writing Service Options
Having taken a number of our clients through this process, we have now put together some standardised service options to help nursing agencies to complete this registration process.
FULL OUTSOURCE – £7,500 + VAT | APPLICATION SUPPORT PACKAGE – £5,000 + VAT | RQIA POLICY TEMPLATES PACKAGE – £2,000 + VAT |
Package includes Brunton Bid Writing completing all elements of the application on behalf of the client including:
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Package includes providing advice and guidance to support the client with completing:
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Provision of policy templates for the client to customise and brand:
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To find out more, why not contact us on 01688 400319 or email fiona.brunton@bruntonconsultancy.co.uk.