Nursing and midwife vacancies in hospitals and healthcare around the UK - and in the North East - are growing and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has warned patient safety is being compromised.
Thousands of NHS and social care nurses were surveyed by the RCN and asked questions about the last shift they worked. Eight in 10 said that during that shift there weren’t enough nursing staff to ensure patients needs were met and they were safe. Of those who responded, just a quarter said there were as many registered nurses on shift as there ought to have been.
The RCN's general secretary Pat Cullen said: "The risk to patients, to services and to health and care staff is simply unacceptable. The complacency from governments across the UK is unacceptable. Our members are nursing under unsustainable pressure, and governments are risking lives by failing to take urgent action. Together, we’re determined to use our position as the leading voice of nursing to be the greatest champion of high-quality patient care."
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Ms Cullen also said nursing staff would need an "inflation-busting" pay rise to help tackle recruitment and retention issues. One nurse added: "You leave work some days and could cry and feel demoralised 'cause you can’t always give the time to patients that you would like or they deserve, nursing is not for the faint hearted it definitely hard work and stressful!"
The Government has responded by saying there are a "record number" of nurses working in the NHS, pointing to what it says is more than 30,000 more nurses than in 2019.
This comes a week after the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust's director of nursing Maurya Cushlow told a board meeting how local and national shortages of nurses were a real risk to the organisation. She spoke of how the increased severity of patients' illness - because many have sought medical help at a later stage and are therefore more unwell when they're in hospital - also meant nurses were under more pressure than ever.
She said: "What we are seeing and what we have reported is that patients coming are of increased acuity and that requires more support from clinicians." She said there was a need for "national support" to tackle the wider issues.
As of April this year, the Newcastle trust's vacancy rate for registered nurses was 5.9%. The equivalent at Northumbria Healthcare was also around 5%, while at South Tyneside and Sunderland the figure is 6.58%. Gateshead Health have also recently reported "significant" numbers of vacancies, while the last month saw vacancies rise at County Durham and Darlington, too.
In Ms Cushlow's report to the Newcastle Hospitals board, she said: "It is evident from the nurse staffing metrics that there is a continued risk to the trust due to the local and national shortage in the registered and support workforce, which is being closely monitored with proactive recruitment plans in place."
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: "Because of the action this government has taken there are record numbers of doctors, nurses and healthcare staff working in the NHS. We are over halfway towards meeting our commitment to recruiting 50,000 extra nurses by 2024, and have commissioned NHS England to develop a long-term workforce strategy to provide certainty for the future."
They said they were grateful to all health and care staff for their "tireless work" and said "record investment" was being channelled to tackle Covid-19 backlogs.
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