Big fall in staff vacancies at Portsmouth NHS Trust
Staff vacancies at the Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust have seen a sharp drop in the last 12 months.
The current vacancy rate is 6.3 per cent – compared to almost 10 per cent this time last year.
The vacancy rates for nursing roles has dropped from almost 12 per cent to under 8 per cent – a figure boosted by the recruitment of over 200 new nurses.
The rate for Healthcare Support Workers has seen a ‘huge’ drop from over 17 per cent to under 6 per cent.
The Trust rates have been falling since the start of the year – new figures from NHS England show 8.1 per cent of full-time equivalent positions at PHU were unfilled as of the end of December.
At the end of March 2022, this figure was 9.1 per cent.
Chief people officer Nicole Cornelius, from PHU, said: ‘Improving our vacancy rate through recruitment and retention is an important priority to the Trust.
‘This ensures we have appropriate staffing levels for patient safety and quality of care, and retain our highlyskilled and dedicated staff, who have faced exceptionally challenging pressures over the last three years.
‘Through the hard work and dedication of our workforce teams, our current vacancy rate for all roles at PHU is 6.3 per cent, an improvement to this time last year when it was 9.9 per cent.
‘Vacancies are covered through the use of bank staff to ensure patient safety and quality of care.
‘In this last year we have recruited newly-qualified nurses from local universities and, in addition to our national recruitment,we have had 230 internationally-educated nurses join the Trust.
‘We will be recruiting a further 220 internationally-educated nurses this year. This has contributed to a drop in nursing vacancies from 11.9 per cent last year to 7.7 per cent.
‘We have also focused our efforts on recruiting and retaining our healthcare support workers.
‘Thanks to this effort, we have seen a huge drop in our vacancy rate from 17.5 per cent last year to 5.9 per cent.
‘Werecogniserecruitment is an issue across the whole of theNHSandourteamsanddepartments have been working on recruitment and retention initiatives.’