NHS still short of Nurses
A study carried out for the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has found that the NHS is still short of nurses and the situation may be getting worse.
The resesarch, conducted by academics at the University of Edinburgh, found that nearly half the nurses starting work in Britain each year come from abroad. The number of non-British nurses entering the NHS each year has risen from 12,000 five years ago to over 18,000 now.
However the number of new British nurses has fallen by nearly 1,000 in the past four years, despite high profile recruitment and retention campaigns.
The Government wants to have 80,000 nurses in the NHS by 2008, a target it will struggle to meet if current rates of recruitment and retention continue. The RCN has also warned that plans to create foundation trusts in England could make the situation worse.
The report showed that the equivalent of 32,000 full-time nurses have joined the NHS since 1999, but these extra nurses are not spread evenly across the UK.
England has seen an 11% increase in nurses while in Wales it is 8%, 6% in Northern Ireland and just 5% in Scotland. The RCN has warned this inequality could get worse if foundation hospitals in England are allowed to offer better terms and conditions to nurses and other staff.
The college’s general secretary, Beverly Malone, warned that the imbalance is putting the future of patient care at risk. ‘With agency costs in England alone soaring to £529 million and up to 20,000 nurses leaving every year, it would be wrong to become complacent,’ she explained.
Dr Evan Harris MP, Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, noted that the report showed the expansion in the number of managers is three times that of nurses.
‘It’s time Ministers realised that their constant interference and blame culture is the biggest deterrent to nurses returning,’ he stated.
