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Aim: To discuss nurses' use of networks to address nursing recruitment and retention in London, UK. Design: Qualitative evaluation of the Capital Nurse programme reporting on 30 narrative interviews with executive, clinical and student nurses in 2019. Results: Executive nurses within the Capital Nurse programme recognized the importance of sociomaterial contexts in the health and social care system in London and worked strategically across these contexts to achieve change. Supported through the Capital Nurse programme, executive nurses from health organizations across London initiated collaborative working to improve recruitment and retention. Primarily by designing and delivering sociomaterial products (organizational and educational) to support nurses to build a career in London. Drawing on ideas from actor network theory, in particular sociomaterial contexts, nurses' actions at all levels to develop and sustain networks to address nursing recruitment and retention across the NHS in London are described. Conclusions: Capital Nurse supported collaborative working both within single organizations and across organizations in London. There is evidence of change in how nurses across the capital work together to improve patient care, improve recruitment and retention. Findings may resonate with nurses in other settings who seek to address the problem of recruitment and retention. They show how nurses coming together in networks to effect changes in practice can work successfully. Impact: Nurses' use of networks led to novel models of communication and action to address the problems of recruitment and retention in London. We argue that sociomateriality should be considered outside the clinical practice setting, as part of nurses' professional development and organizational practice, that is how they plan their career, how they address recruitment and retention, how they communicate across organizations about nursing issues. No Patient or Public Contribution: This was an evaluation of a staff development project in London, which sought to elicit nurses' experiences of participation in Capital Nurse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I discuss the effects on the patient experience of isolation nursing during the CoronaVirus Disease (COVID)-19 pandemic. An unintended consequence of isolation nursing has been to distance patients from nurses and emphasise the technical side of nursing while at the same time reducing the relational or affective potential of nursing. Such distanced forms of nursing normalise the distal patient in hospital. I consider ways in which this new form of distanced nursing has unwittingly contributed to the continued commodification of nursing care in the British NHS. Autoethnography is used to describe and reflect on the illness experience, the experiences of caregivers and the sociocultural organisation of health care. The findings discuss three areas of the illness experience: intimate nursing care; communication; the 'distanced' patient experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]