Nurses warn of ‘endless winter’ for NHS

THE NHS is facing an ‘endless winter’ as pressures usually experienced in the colder months continue all year round, the Royal College of Nursing warned yesterday.

The RCN said the ‘Dunkirk spirit’ of A&E nurses had gone, and they were increasingly choosing to leave the profession because it had ‘broken’ them.

At the RCN’s Congress in Glasgow yesterday, medical professionals highlighted an array of problems that used to emerge during the winter months but are now plaguing A&E departments year-round.

They include patients being treated in corridors or ambulances, elderly patients moved in the middle of the night because of lack of beds, trusts experiencing ‘constant’ major incidents, and hospitals running with no spare bed capacity. Janet Youd, chairman of the RCN Emergency Care Association, told the meeting in Glasgow: ‘The attrition rate of emergency nurses leaving emergency departments is at a level it has never been before.

‘We are really struggling to recruit people and, when we do, within six months we’ve broken them and they’re leaving to look for less pressured, more family-friendly jobs.’