NHS spending nearly £1.5bn annually to employ temporary nursing staff

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDMay 14 2018

New research shows that the NHS is spending nearly £1.5bn annually to employ temporary nursing staff in order to cope with the staff shortages. There is a shortage of around 40,000 nurses in the country the report has shown.

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This new report from the Open University says that instead of the £1.46bn being spent on temporary staff, the NHS could well be employing 66,000 qualified registered nurses and pay for them. The report points out that the NHS paid an additional 79 million hours of registered nurses’ time at the premium rates in 2017. This is 61 percent over and above the hourly rates of a qualified registered nurse who is newly recruited in full time employment. This extra financial burden could be done away with and the NHS would be saving £560 million annually says the report. The Open University got their information and data from the Freedom of Information requests that was part of the “Tacking of Nursing shortage” report.

Jan Draper, professor of nursing at the Open University says that temporary nurses are only plugging gaps and are literally “sticking a plaster” over the big staff shortage problem. The costs are also bigger than if the posts were to be permanently filled by qualified nurses. She said that this would a more “strategic and sustainable approach,” to prevent putting patient care at risk. According to Janet Davies, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, this report exposes the “false economy” in NHS staffing. She also said that the thousands of unfilled nursing posts have led to poorer patient care. She called the present workforce planning ineffective and guided by the financial resources rather than patient needs. This planning has only served to raise costs she added and this is not only due to increase in recruitment fees of the temporary nurses but also due to sickness absence bills that is caused due to the increasing stress on these recruits.

The report adds that there is a severe retention problem among nursing staff. They found that at least seven in ten newly qualified nurses quit NHS trust within one year of qualifying and often move to other trusts which are away from where they have been trained. Unhappiness with their jobs too is seen in large number of nurses with 34 percent of registered nurses reporting being unhappy with their position, 35 percent thinking of quitting their jobs if things do not look up. There is a one third reduction in the number of new students who applied for getting a nursing degree.

After the Brexit there is a 28 percent increase in the number of nurses leaving Britain. This has also served to increase the already shortage problem. Nurses are also not applying for overseas roles with an 87 percent reduction over the last one year.

The report suggests that flexible training including distance learning could be incorporated to bring in more students. More than two thirds of the registered nurses believe apprenticeships could also attract new nursing students to this profession.