Nearly 20% of NI health service staff employed in admin posts

AROUND one in every five employees in Northern Ireland’s health service works in an admin post, a new report has revealed.

Over 11,000 people are employed in administration and clerical roles here — accounting for 19% of the entire workforce.

The statistics emerged in census figures published yesterday by the Department of Health, which examined staff numbers across health trusts at the end of March this year. It found there are only 1.72 nurses for every person working in clerical posts across the health service here.

There were 11,671 whole time equivalent (WTE) administration and clerical staff — 19% of health service workers — while in comparison 20,139 nurses and midwives make up 34%.

While nurses and midwives are the largest single staff group, admin and clerical staff form the second biggest grouping, followed by professional and technical staff — such as physiotherapists, occupational therapists and dieticians — who make up 15%. Another 13% are employed in social services.

Medical and dental staff represent 7% of the workforce and ambulance staff make up 2%.

In May, Health Minister Robin Swann moved to increase midwifery and nursing undergraduate places to address “chronic” shortages of staff in the health care system.

Mr Swann confirmed Executive funding of up to £2.4m was in place to secure an additional 300 this year, bringing the total to a new all-time high of 1,325.

The New Decade, New Approach document set out a key priority of providing a further 900 pre-registration nursing and midwifery training places over a three-year period, beginning in 2020/21.

It was also a pledge made in order to help resolve the industrial dispute which saw unprecedented numbers of health workers take to picket lines at the end of last year and this year over pay parity with their counterparts in the rest of the UK and under-staffing.

Pat Cullen, director of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said that while there has been a small increase in the nursing workforce over the past year, an extra 394 nurses has done little to offset nursing vacancies, currently 2,389.

“We are still facing the nurse staffing crisis that led nurses to take strike action earlier this year. We recognise that the Minister’s promise of an additional 900 nursing student places over the next three years will go some way to ease to the burden.

“However, the only way to truly ensure this never happens again is to deliver safe nurse staffing legislation in Northern Ireland as soon as possible.”

Ms Cullen added: “It is unclear if these figures include the temporary volunteers who returned to practice during the pandemic.

“The RCN continues to receive numerous concerns from members about the over-reliance on bank and agency nursing and the instability in the workforce this creates. Unfortunately this report does not truly reflect the full picture of the difficulties facing nursing in Northern Ireland, and the impact of simply not having enough nurses on the ground is having on services and patients.”

Yesterday’s workforce census also showed that, as of March, the health and social care sector employed 68,766 (60,090 WTE) people on either a full-time or part-time basis.

A substantial majority (79%) of these employees are female, 56% of whom work full-time.

In all 41% of all staff are aged under 40; 26% are between 40 and 49, and 33% are over 50.

The Belfast HSC Trust is the largest trust in Northern Ireland, employing 31% of all health and social care staff (18,378 WTE).

According to the report, the HSC workforce grew by 17% (8,597 WTE) between 2011 and 2020.