THE HEAD OF THE Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Janet Davies, has called on the Government to “lift the NHS out of this dangerous and downward spiral.” She was referring to information received by the BBC which shows that thousands of nurses are leaving the NHS each year.
“We are haemorrhaging nurses at precisely the time when demand has never been higher. The next generation of British nurses aren’t coming through just as the most experienced nurses are becoming demoralised and leaving,” continued Ms Davies, who is Chief Executive and General Secretary of the RCN.
The BBC’s research shows that over 10% of nurses have left the NHS in England each year for the past three years – that would be enough staff to provide nursing to around 20 average sized hospitals. Around 33,000 nurses left last year. Their employers have to cover their posts with agency nurses while they try to recruit replacements or even long term, if no new nurses can be recruited. This is more costly than employing nurses direct, reducing the money Trusts can spend on nursing staff. This increases nurses’ workloads, which is a major factor pushing them out of the NHS.
The figures include nurses who are reaching the point where they wish to retire – but younger nurses are leaving too. Last year, over half the nurses who left the NHS were under 40. Such was last year’s exodus that 3,000 more nurses left than joined the NHS – the biggest gap for five years and a real sign of a coming crisis.
Nursing bosses were warned months ago that Brexit uncertainty had caused the supply of nurses from EU countries to dry up and they would have to act before a crisis set in. Clearly they have, indeed, failed to act.
The RCN has called on the Government to give nurses a pay rise but also to provide more support – such as more funding so that Trusts can employ more nurses to return workloads to a reasonable level.
The Chief Nursing Officer for England, Professor Jane Cummings, has given a bizarre response to the crisis – claiming it is just a PR problem. She has hinted that the Government may indeed spend more money – but this would be on a propaganda scheme to claim that nursing is not as bad as it is made out to be. “We do lose people that need to be encouraged,” she said. “We’re in the process of bringing in lots of nurse ambassadors that are going to be able to talk about what a great role it is, to be able to tell their story, so we can really encourage people to enter the profession and for those in the profession, to stay in it.”
•Read more about it: Brexit: nurses vote with their feet Health campaigners protest over funding cuts
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