Danger alert on hospital staffing
Hospitals are running wards with dangerously few nurses and using healthcare workers as “stand-ins”, an investigation says. Almost every acute hospital in England is ‘failing to meet staffing standards’.
HOSPITALS ARE running wards with a dangerously low number of nurses and are using healthcare workers as “stand-ins”, an investigation suggests.
Analysis of two years’ worth of official data shows almost every acute hospital in England is failing to meet its own standard on how many nurses it should have on wards.
Nurses described “desperately unsafe” numbers of registered nurses, while others said patients are being put at risk.
The problem appears to have got worse since the Government introduced a cap on how much hospitals are allowed to spend on agency staff.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt ordered NHS trusts to publish monthly data on staffing levels as part of the Government response to the mid-Staffordshire scandal, in which hundreds of patients died as a result of poor care.
But analysis by the Health Service Journal (HSJ), covering data from 2014/15 to 2016/17, shows 96 per cent of acute hospitals (214) reporting figures failed to meet their own planned level for registered nurses working during the day in October 2016.
Some 85 per cent (190 hospitals) also missed their target for nurses working at night in the same month. This is the worst performance for both day and night since the HSJ started analysing data in 2014.
Across the two years studied, more than 150 hospitals failed to achieve their planned daytime staffing levels for nurses, while the data suggests gaps in rotas are being plugged with healthcare assistants.
Research published in November found that patients are a fifth more likely to die in hospitals where nurses are replaced with less-qualified staff.
England has one of the lowest ratios of qualified nurses to other staff and experts have warned against diluting the skills mix.
As part of the investigation, nurses told the HSJ of widespread problems on wards.
One working in the South West of England said: “The most patients I have ever had is 16 on a night shift. I know for a fact that I did not do all the observations and can only hope that I did not cause anyone any real harm.”
In one incident report seen by the HSJ, one nurse was left to care for 24 patients on a medical ward during 2015.
Another nurse said: “Corners are cut and safety is compromised daily, we just do a really good job of covering it up.”
The HSJ analysis showed that Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex, which is in special measures, has not achieved above 80 per cent of planned nurse staffing since quarter four of 2014/15.
Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: “These new figures show that almost every hospital in England is now short of nursing staff. Tired, overworked nurses cannot be expected to continue providing the quality of care which patients need.
Professor Alison Leary, head of workforce modelling at London South Bank University, told the HSJ: “The overall trend shows organisations bolstering nurse gaps with healthcare assistants.”
Figures show every hospital in England is now short of nursing staff. Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth