About Us

We help when no one else can. 

Whether the requirement is last minute, unusual, remote or difficult to cover, Scottish Nursing Guild provides high-quality patient-centric care, day or night. 

With almost 30 years of experience, we empower our NHS and HSE clients, private care organisations and individuals living at home to access expert care when they need it most. 

Our services extend across Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland, upholding standards of clinical expertise that go above and beyond local regulations and guidelines. Our nurse-led team has firsthand experience of the challenges facing healthcare providers and staff, creating a responsive value-adding service that puts people first. 

Recognising the commitment required to provide expert support at short notice or long distances, our workforce benefits from generous hourly pay rates, paid travel and toll costs, NMC & NMBI reimbursement and professional development training and support. 

Scottish Nursing Guild protects patients and supports those caring for them. Fast, reliable and professional, we specialise in helping clients when no one else can. 

Our mission

To support health providers deliver the highest standards of nursing care when no one else can.

Our vision

To be the trusted provider of exceptional nurses to the NHS, HSE and private health sector, often at extremely short notice.

Our nurses

We recruit only the very best professionals, and only those who embrace our ethos. Every nurse is flexible, highly experienced and willing to travel long distances, often at short notice. This enthusiasm and commitment to nursing, teamed with exceptional skills, is hard to come by.

We demand the greatest commitment from each nurse, as our rigorous recruitment process demonstrates. In return, our pay rates reflect these high expectations. We care passionately about our nurses and the difference they make to the lives of patients and clients.

Our clients

We work with a wide range of clients in both hospital and community settings. Our clients can call on us at extremely short notice, at any time, day, or night. They include:

  • NHS trusts and health boards
  • HSE hospitals
  • Private hospitals
  • Local authorities and councils
  • Care and nursing homes
  • GP surgeries
  • Urgent care centres
  • Individuals living at home with complex health needs
  • Individuals requiring private nursing care outside of hospital
  • Mental health and learning/intellectual disability units
  • Medical research organisations

Expert recruitment teams

Our recruitment teams are staffed with experienced registered nurses, who we believe are best placed to recruit like-minded professionals. Our recruitment process ensures that every nurse has the most recent and relevant experience, and in addition we offer our nurses voluntary training, CPD and PREP study opportunities. This means they stay up-to-date with the latest best practice while enhancing their skills – something usually only available for those in substantive posts.

Quality and compliance

We know that quality care is driven by quality governance. We run our own regular audits and have a dedicated clinical governance team lead by our Quality Assurance Director, who is also a registered nurse. We have a robust complaints and incidents process where all reported events are recorded in our system DATIX. Our complaints and incidents team work with our nurses, clients and any necessary third parties during the entire investigation process to ensure all parties are kept informed.

Lead by specialist nurses

We’re best positioned to place the right nurse, in the right place, at the right time, because our business is led by nurses from a variety of specialist backgrounds. We have 33 nurses working across Scottish Nursing Guild and our sister company Thornbury Nursing Services offices, most in senior positions. These nurses have a clinical background in adults, paediatrics, ICU, HDU, nursing homes, chemotherapy, mental health, learning disabilities and theatres. This helps us to ensure we recruit and place only the highest quality staff into the right clinical setting whilst also being able to have informed conversations with our clients on the type of agency workers they need.

Our history

The first SNG office opened in Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh. There were four employees, and the office was situated in the heart of the city above a wine importer. In 2013, we expanded into Northern Ireland with our first office in Belfast. In January 2016, we opened our first office in the Republic of Ireland, in the thriving city of Dublin. Most recently, we opened our second Irish office in Cork in October 2022 to service clients across Munster.