More than 3,000 Nottinghamshire NHS workers quit their job last year, statistics have shown. Whist more than 4,000 joined the sector in 2021, unions and campaign groups said the NHS has a "serious shortage" of all types of staff.
According to NHS digital data, 3,320 employees left the NHS across the city and county in 2021, including 1,780 at Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH), which runs Queen's Medical Centre and City Hospital. The trust managed to recruit 1,799 in the same year, but the number of homegrown workers dropped.
In 2015, domestically-trained doctors and nurses accounted for 86 percent of NUH's new recruits. In 2021 that figure dropped to 71 percent.
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Similar trends can be found elsewhere across Nottinghamshire's health service. Sherwood Forest Hospitals (SFH), which runs Kings Mill, Newark and Mansfield Hospitals, dropped from 90 per cent to 73 per cent.
Much of this gap was filled by workers from outside the UK and European Union, who accounted for 20 percent of recruits in 2021 - compared to six percent in 2015. New EU staff dropped from five to four percent.
UNISON, which represents healthcare workers across Nottinghamshire, said whilst it was reassuring to know people were stepping up, the NHS is "in the depths of the biggest staffing crisis it's ever faced". East Midlands head of health, Keith Libetta, said: "The Government must address increasing workload pressures on staff to ensure that the NHS remains an attractive employer.
"A solution to the staffing crisis, which lies at the heart of the worsening statistics, is long overdue. That must start with a rethink on pay so the many staff on the brink of quitting are persuaded to stay. If they don't, the consequences for care are unthinkable.”
Referring to NUH, Mike Scott, spokesman for campaign group Keep Our NHS Public, said it had "a serious shortage of all types of staff". "The result of this is more pressure on those who remain, leading to burnout and more vacancies," he said.
"Given that this is a direct result of government underfunding over many years, there is a limited amount that any Trust can do in the short term."
"The disgraceful scrapping of bursaries for nurse training has inevitably made recruitment more difficult and while foreign staff are always welcome in our city, we should not be relying on tempting workers away from their own health services, which are often in a much more dire state than in the UK."
Rosa Waddingham Chief Nurse for NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire said: “Like many NHS systems across the country, we have faced challenges around recruitment and retention in recent years and we are taking steps to improve this.
“Recruiting and retaining staff is a top priority and we are actively working across the system to address this by working with universities and further education representatives to deliver increased placements and develop a longer-term training strategy, which will include retention strategies for all professional groups. The NHS People Plan is key to ensuring our people are happy and engaged at work, and stay and develop their career with us. The NHS offers a wide range of career and job opportunities which can be found on NHS Jobs
“We are exceptionally proud of our health and care workforce and thank them for their continued hard work and commitment in caring for people during these difficult and pressured times.”
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