NHS needs 2,800 more nurses and midwives
NHS is facing a record shortage of nurses and midwives, sparking claims that patient care is at risk.
New figures reveal an unprecedented 2,789 vacancies last year while separate data shows a significant slump in the number of students starting nursing and midwifery courses, suggesting the staffing crisis will only get worse.
Last night Scottish Labour, which uncovered the figures, blamed First Minister Nicola Sturgeon for cutting training places when she was Health Secretary in 2011.
The number of vacancies has since more than quadrupled.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in Scotland, which criticised the cuts at the time, warned yesterday that the resulting staff shortfall threatens patient care.
Norman Provan, RCN associate director, said: ‘The high vacancy rate is an indication that the Scottish Government and health boards have failed to future-proof the workforce and are constantly relying on nurses working additional hours to cover shortages of staff.
‘Without strategic long-term planning and ensuring nursing staff are paid fairly for the work they do, patients won’t get the care they need. We will be asking the Scottish Government to ensure their proposed Bill on “safe and effective staffing in health and social care” supports improved workforce planning and safeguards patients by guaranteeing the right staff in the right place at the right time.’
Scottish Labour announced it would set up a ‘workforce commission’ to develop plans to fix what it called a staffing crisis in the NHS caused by Miss Sturgeon’s ‘spectacular error of judgment’.
Yesterday, it emerged the NHS paid out £26 million in overtime to nurses and midwives last year, in order to fill rota gaps.
Last month, a nurse told The Scottish Mail on Sunday that hospitals during the winter crisis resembled ‘hell on earth’.
When Miss Sturgeon announced a cut of 300 training places for 2012, she said it was a sensible way of ‘minimising the risk of oversupply and graduate unemployment’.
But she was warned at the time by the RCN that the cuts risked ‘there not being enough professionally qualified nurses graduating’.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘In January, we announced a recommended 10.8 per cent increase in student nursing and midwifery intakes for 2018-19, the sixth successive annual rise.’