Hundreds of unfilled jobs biggest risk facing mental health services
THE chief executive of the Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust, which deals with mental health care, has said that staffing levels are the ‘biggest risk’ the trust faces.
Councillors raised concerns about the recruitment and retention of medical staff as a Care Quality Commission (CQC) report was discussed at a recent meeting of the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Joint Health Committee.
Dr Peter Miller, chief executive of the Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust, was quizzed about the level of vacancies, and why retaining staff had been identified as a problem.
He said: “Staffing and workforce is the biggest risk the trust has to face. It’s the biggest risk on our corporate risk register.
“In terms of inpatient care, I’m confident we have adequate staffing at all times on all of our wards to a safe level. However, the levels of bank or agency staff in the trust is significant.”
Dr Miller said that across the trust there should be a staff of 1,600 band five or six registered qualified nurses. There are currently around 220 vacancies.
On the Bradgate Unit, there should be 150 regular nurses. There are usually between 40 and 50 vacancies.
He added: “We have around 30-40 per cent of our staff that are bank or temporary and that does pose challenges when it comes to compliance with continuity of care.”
Dr Miller said that bank staff are trained in the same way as permanent nurses, but agency staff can come from other trusts which can lead to a lower level of compliance with some ‘day-today’ tasks.
He added: “Workforce is a major issue, recruitment is an issue, retaining staff is a bigger issue.
“Staffing will remain a challenge, I can’t see an immediate improvement to staffing in physical care or mental care.
“When the CQC return in November, I think there will still be some concerns and that will impact on how they rate us.”
Councillors also asked Dr Miller about medicine management.
CQC inspectors had highlighted incidents where outof-date medicine had been found, and fridges used to store medication were set at the wrong temperatures.
Dr Miller said: “We’ve never had a patient come to harm when they have had out-of-date medication, or medication that has been stored at the wrong temperature. On a scale of risk, it is relatively low.”
He added: “It’s enormously frustrating from my perspective when I see what is essentially poor practice and when someone hasn’t checked something and they should have checked it.
“I am determined that this is one thing we will get right when the inspectors return.”
Pharmacy technicians have been employed to prevent out-of-date medicines being stocked on ward trolleys, and an automatic system has been installed to monitor fridge temperatures.