NHS nursing shortages.

On Tuesday 12 November 2013, The Royal College of Nursing issued a valuable report on nursing vacancies. Using Freedom of Information legislation the union found that average vacancy rates at hospitals are around six per cent.

Extrapolating the figures from the 61 NHS trusts that replied, the College said this would amount to nearly 20,000 full-time equivalent nursing, midwifery or health visitor vacancies over the whole country.

Dr Peter Carter, chief executive and general secretary of the RCN, said: “Understaffing remains a real issue across the NHS, and we know that many trusts are down to the bone in terms of the number of frontline nursing staff they have due to cutting posts to save money.

“Unsafe staffing levels have been implicated in a number of high-profile investigations into patient safety. We call on employers in the NHS to put an end to boom-and-bust workforce planning and develop clear standards to ensure safe staffing levels are met, supported by robust inspection based on reliable data.”

 

All the reports into NHS scandals – The Francis Enquiry, the investigation onto the 14 failing trusts, have all highlighted that inadequate staffing levels result in poor care and worse outcomes. They also stress out staff.

The Francis report argued for minimum levels of staffing – something the government has refused to consider.

As the waiting times in Accident and Emergency grow, the reason is not a ‘shortage of beds’ as is often said – this is not true. There are plenty of empty beds and empty wards. Every so often they shut a hospital because there are so many closed wards. The shortage of beds is because there is a shortage of nurses – staff who leave aren’t replaced.

Worse than that, the RCN pointed out that “the Department of Health stopped collecting vacancy data in 2011, when vacancy rates for nurses stood at 2.5 per cent”.

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)