Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Health service staff claim 3,500 posts are unfilled in Ulster NHS
HEALTH service workers have dismissed claims there are
1,800 empty posts in the NHS – claiming the real total is 3,500.
Staff representatives slammed the reported figure which emerged as the head of the Health and Social Care Board was grilled by a Westminster committee.
They said there is a need for a “reality check” over the state of local health services.
The Royal College of Nursing’s Janice Smyth claimed with nurses alone there are “at least” 1,800 unfilled posts.
She said when you add in allied health professionals like physios, speech and language therapists and others the figure is “way beyond that”.
Ms Smyth added that among the issues making recruitment and retention of staff difficult are pay and a reduction in the number of nurses being trained locally from 800 a year to 600.
She said Trusts taking “shortterm cost-saving measures” over previous years like freezing recruitment is continuing to affect employee levels.
Ms Smyth added nurses unable to get jobs are ending up as “bank” staff who, because they do not have a permanent position, struggle to get mortgages.
She said gaps in rotas are also being filled with agency staff who cost more.
The long-serving employee added overtime cuts also lead to workers often being overlooked for extra shifts which will go to bank nurses to save money.
Unite lead officer for health Kevin Mcadam described the staff shortfall as a “threat posed to patient safety”.
He claimed HSCB have admitted the figure is around 3,500.
Mr Mcadam said: “The CEO of the Health and Social Care Board provided a figure of 1,800 to the Northern Ireland Select Committee in Westminster for the total number of vacancies in the NHS in Northern Ireland.
“Unite was at the forefront of efforts to point out this figure could be as high as 3,500.
Today’s belated admission by the board is welcome and perhaps reflects a recognition of the true scale of the problems we face.
“There is a need for a reality check in health.
“Northern Ireland received funding of over £300million for a restructuring of pay scales and improvements to poverty pay that would go a long way to addressing the recruitment and retention difficulties faced by the service.
“Unfortunately, the department continue to use the absence of a locallyaccountable health minister to justify the delay in entering meaningful negotiations about how this new money can be used to modernise our health service.”