Agency nurses on £67 an hour, twice as much as junior doctors

AGENCY nurses are being paid more than twice the rate of NHS junior doctors for working on wards over the bank holidays.

A private agency is offering £67 an hour for registered nurses over the public holidays amid a massive shortage of NHS staff.

That rate is for band five nurses who are not working at an advanced level.

It is more than double the £28.54 an hour paid to first-year junior doctors and far in excess of the hourly NHS bank holiday rate being paid to doctors below consultant level, some of whom will have had eight years of medical training.

The revelation comes amid widespread NHS staff shortages caused by Covid disruption and long-standing NHS vacancies.

Critics say that while they agree nurses should be paid well for what they do, doctors are not being offered similar rates, leading to out-of-hours medical shifts not being covered and raising patient safety issues.

The discrepancy was highlighted by Dr Lewis Hughes, former chairman of the British Medical Association’s junior doctors committee.

He said: ‘Nurses who are spending time away from family and friends on what is ultimately, an additional day set aside for rest, clearly deserve fair recompense. Seeing that band five registered nurses can access this is heartening and shows their critical value to safe patient care.

‘Doctors with seven or eight years of medical experience will be paid less than this, however, for also working very hard on the same day and being indispensable.

‘If you spend more than a day in hospital, it will be these ward doctors responsible for you once you pass through A&E or the acute medical unit. They would be paid around half of this and by the time their vast student loans, and often fees, are deducted along with income tax and national insurance… there’s very little left to hand.

‘The pay for junior doctors to cover these gaps isn’t keeping pace with the cost of living.

‘This leads to doctors’ shifts being uncovered, and fewer doctors covering more patients.

‘This means seeing only the very sickest as a priority, meaning patient care generally suffers as doctors turn to firefighting.’ The UK is gearing up for a fourday bank holiday weekend to celebrate the Queen’s platinum jubilee from June 2-6.

Private firm the Scottish Nursing Guild, which supplies staff to the NHS, is offering registered nurses from band five, who normally make £26,000-£32,000 a year, £67 an hour, which would equate to £837.50 for a full 12-and-a-half-hour shift.

These are roles requiring nurses to carry out direct care to patients but are not advanced nursing roles requiring specialist training, such as prescribing.

They do not have the same responsibilities as doctors such as discharge, administrative paperwork and ordering investigative tests.

In sharp contrast, junior doctors – who do have these responsibilities – looking for last-minute bank holiday shifts through the NHS staffing bank can expect £28.54-£35.59 per hour, depending on their level of training.

In 2018/2019, NHS boards spent £169.5million on agency staffing including £26.2million on private agency nurses, £98million on locum doctors and £161.9million on NHS-run staff banks.

Scottish Conservative health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane said: ‘It is hardly surprising that private firms are now shelling out to pay for nurses to work in the NHS. That is a direct failure of the SNP’s lack of planning.’

‘Patient care generally suffers’