NHS staffing crisis amongst nurses now ‘impacting on patient survival’ as hospital numbers running short triples in five years

Recent figures show that the number of hospitals regularly understaffed with nurses has nearly tripled in the last five years, with the worst hit departments including geriatric medicine, acute medicine, critical care, neonatal care and cardiology, where quality care is essential in order to save lives.

Information obtained through a series of Freedom of Information requests by the Health Service Journal (HSJ) shows that in every single month fro 2014 to June 2019, most hospitals fell short of their planned nurse staffing levels on day shifts.

Experts have also warned that hospitals were recruiting too many support workers to compensate for the lack of trained nurses, adding that this was forcing a “massive skill mix change”, which was putting patient care at risk.

Ben Gershlick, senior economist at the Health Foundation, said “We have seen a hollowing out of the (nursing) workforce with more doctors and more support staff. But because we haven’t increased nurses, we have drifted into this massive skill mix change without thinking what it means on the ground.

“If we don’t do something soon it is only going to get worse. We need to do something quite big quite soon to get ahead of the problem.”

Dr Katherine Henderson of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said “This shortage is in part the reason why so many trusts are struggling to maintain patient flow in hospitals, discharge patients in a timely fashion and prevent long waits.

“The level of care provided by our nursing workforce is exemplary and the shortage of around 43,000 nurses is undoubtedly having an effect on patient experience.

“This means that nurses working in crowded emergency departments are being stretched to their limits.”

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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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