Choosing the 'right' people for nursing: can we recruit to care?

Can we recruit to care? A brief view of the recruitment of student nurses at a UK university is highlighted as an example of selecting the 'right' people for nursing careers. The Francis report advises that student nurses need to be both intelligent and caring, with an intrinsic desire to help others. They are required to be passionate about the values that underpin nursing and motivated to put the welfare of others above their own. When recruiting nurses from a society with values far removed from those desired by the nursing profession, finding the right people to become the workforce of the future is a difficult task. Academic and practice personnel interviewed potential student nurses with an emphasis on looking for caring attributes alongside the necessary educational requirements. The students were being recruited for a new humanised nursing curriculum with caring values at the heart of the educational experience.