Exposed, full scale of NHS staff crisis

Vacancies up 16% in one year 30,000 jobs can’t be filled 1,000 nurses quit a month

THE NHS has advertised more than 86,000 empty posts in just three months as management struggle to control a staffing crisis.

Official figures reveal more than a third of the vacancies were for nursing and midwife roles, blamed on a seven-year pay freeze and foreign applicants facing tough new English language tests.

In March alone the NHS advertised 30,613 vacant posts – a 16 per cent rise on a year earlier and the highest monthly number ever recorded.

The latest figures from NHS Digital, which collects healthcare data, shows that the equivalent of almost 1,300 full-time nurses left between March and April. With the total number of NHS vacancies rising 10 per cent in a year, Labour warned of an ‘unprecedented workforce crisis’ while unions said patients would die as a result.

The figures show that between January and April a total of 86,035 adverts were placed on the NHS Jobs website. But this vastly underestimates the scale of the problem as a single advert is usually used to try to fill several vacancies at a time.

Some 32,929 of these adverts were for nursing and midwife roles – 38 per cent – and 11,155 for doctors and dentists.

Janet Davies, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College Of Nursing, said: ‘At the very moment the NHS needs to be recruiting more nursing staff, we learn the number is falling and the NHS finds itself advertising for more jobs it cannot fill.

‘A lethal cocktail of factors is resulting in too few nurses, and patient care is suffering. The Government desperately needs to keep experienced staff still working in the NHS.’

Figures from the Nursing And Midwifery Council last month showed the number of EU nurses applying to work in the UK had dropped by 96 per cent since last July. Experts blamed a new English test introduced last year, as well as nurses fearing they would be unwelcome as the UK is leaving the Euro- pean Union, while many are angry at the ongoing pay freeze that has been in place for the past seven years.

But leading doctors said all areas of the health service were struggling to hire new employees and retain their experienced, long-serving workers.

Dr Andrew Dearden, treasurer of the British Medical Association, said: ‘Across many parts of the NHS, recruitment and retention problems are leaving staff and services thinly stretched and affecting patients’ access to care.

‘Doctors are telling us they are struggling with unsustainable workloads to try to fill the gaps. This has a huge impact on morale, often leading to stress and burnout.

‘If we cannot find a solution, it is inevitable that these doctors may consider looking elsewhere for a job that provides them with greater career satisfaction and a better work/life balance.’

A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘Staffing is a priority – that’s why we have invested in the front line and there are almost 32,400 more professionally qualified clinical staff including almost 11,800 more doctors, and over 12,500 more nurses on our wards since May 2010.’

‘Lethal cocktail of factors’