New warnings over NHS staff shortages
Two new reports have warned about potential staff shortages in key areas of the NHS.
According to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) the NHS is facing a “fragile future” with an increasing number of nurses choosing to leave the profession, and the cost of employing agency staff increasing.
Also on Monday, the British Medical Association (BMA) warns that A&E departments are facing shortages as doctors below consultant level are leaving to take up better paid positions as GPs.
Though the RCN accepts that the overall number of nurses has grown, it warns that the NHS is increasingly reliant on agency nurses or nurses from overseas. It claims that the cost of employing agency nurses has trebled within the past six years to reach more than £600 million. In addition, the RCN stresses that every year around 30,000 nurses (one in ten) leave the NHS annually, and a one per cent reduction in this rate would be equivalent to retaining 3,000 nurses.
General secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, Dr Beverly Malone, said: “We have to ask why so many nurses feel unable to commit to the NHS and prefer to work on a temporary basis? Nurses tell us that the chance to choose which hours they work is a major factor. We want employers to do more with better flexible working arrangements to significantly improve retention.”
The RCN also warns that Britain is unlikely to be able to continue recruiting the same number of nurses from overseas, as other developed countries – notably the USA and Canada – are now competing to recruit nurses from the same developing countries.
It is calling for flexible working hours, rather than fixed shifts, to become the norm and special measures to be introduced to ensure the retention of older staff, such as tailored “return to nursing” courses and greater financial advice.
Commenting on the warnings, Liberal Democrat spokesman Paul Burstow said: “Overseas recruitment is the Government’s sticking plaster solution to the shortages of nurses. It is morally indefensible to aggressively recruit nurses from developing countries that have their own health crises.
“Nurses should be allowed to work flexibly as this will attract more people into the profession. But it is essential that money is not wasted through poor organisation of temporary staffing.”
The BMA is also warning about a potential shortage of doctors. It estimates that around half of the doctors working in A&E are employed under staff grade and associate specialist positions.
Mohib Khan, who chairs its Staff and Associate Specialist Committee, claims that new research shows that 62 per cent of A&E departments have lost a staff grade doctor to general practice in the last year.
Seven out of ten A&E departments also have vacancies for this grade, with 75 per cent of these citing the disparities between SAS and GP pay and conditions.
Mr Khan said: “Unless things get better for this group of doctors, there are going to be serious problems staffing hospital emergency departments. The BMA has always had concerns that poor conditions for SAS doctors would be bad news for patients. This is evidence that their neglect poses a real threat to Accident and Emergency services.”
Mr Khan is expected to use his address to a BMA conference in Edinburgh today to call for a new contract for SAS grade doctors. Negotiations on a new contract between doctors and employers cannot start unless the Government gives the go-ahead.
The Government though says that it is”nonsense” to talk about a recruitment crisis, pointing to the extra investment put into the NHS.
