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Showing results for tags 'Recruitment'.
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News Article
Trust in staffing crisis as eight ICU nurses quit in just two weeks
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Eight highly skilled intensive care (ICU) nurses have resigned from one trust in the past two weeks and more could follow, a leading nurse has warned. More resignations expected as working conditions remain unsustainable Belfast Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland has confirmed it is redeploying non-specialist nursing staff to fill the gaps in staffing on ICU wards, with experienced ICU nurses expected to provide supervision. RCN Northern Ireland director Rita Devlin said the college has heard others at the trust are ‘considering their position’. "These are highly skilled nurses who are difficult to replace and this is a very worrying situation," she said. "Nursing staff are doing everything they can to keep services going, but it is not sustainable to work under such pressure for long periods of time without a break." The resignations come just months after it was revealed that 182 nurses and 50 healthcare assistants had quit their jobs at the trust between January and July. Read full story Source: Nursing Standard, 23 November 2021 -
News Article
Staffing agencies triple rates as care homes and NHS fight over nurses
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Nursing shortages are allowing “profiteering” staffing agencies to triple their rates, care leaders have warned, raising the risk of vulnerable patients being forced to move care homes and increasing the burden on the NHS. The crisis is forcing some nursing homes to become standard residential care homes without support for people with chronic diseases. The shortage also makes it harder for NHS hospitals to discharge patients. Some hospitals have redeployed their own staff into nursing homes to free beds in hospitals. In other places, NHS trusts are competing for staff with care providers. Geoff Butcher, director of Blackadder Corporation, which runs six homes in the West Midlands, said that he paid nurses about £19.50 an hour, slightly higher than the NHS rate of £16.52. “Two of our nurses resigned recently and they’ve gone to an agency for £35 an hour,” he said. “And that agency then came to us and said we can have these staff back at £52 an hour. They want £95 an hour for those nurses on a bank holiday nightshift. It’s utterly unaffordable. “Because the NHS can’t recruit they are having to use these agencies as well. So the NHS is bidding against us, therefore they’re pushing the rates up, and the whole thing has gone into a completely crazy spiral. The agencies are just grossly profiteering out of it." Read full story Source: The Guardian, 14 November 2021 -
News Article
Nursing leaders point to ‘untenable’ health and care conditions in England
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Nursing leaders have highlighted 10 pressures on health and social care services which they say have created “unsustainable, untenable” conditions. A report from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said members working across health and social care in England dispute statements that the current situation in health and care is sustainable. NHS hospital waiting times is listed as one of the 10 indicators with the report referring to this issue as “clearly a symptom of an unsustainable system”. The report, 10 Unsustainable Pressures on the Health and Care System in England, refers to “corridor care” – time spent on trolleys in hospital corridors before being admitted to a hospital bed. “We are clear that delivery of care within inadequate environments such as that frequently referred to as ‘corridor care’ or ‘corridor nursing’ is fundamentally unsafe and must not be normalised,” the report says. The 10 pressures also include high COVID-19 infection rates, NHS nursing workforce vacancy rate, social care workforce vacancies and NHS elective/community waiting times. The report says: “Action needs to be taken to retain as many nursing staff as possible in light of serious staffing vacancies, as well as high levels of exhaustion and burnout. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 15 November 2021 -
News Article
Jeremy Hunt warns NHS spending ‘will unravel’ without workforce plan
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned extra funding for the NHS “will unravel quickly” without the extra doctors and nurses needed. The health committee chair said today that the lack of any mention of workforce training budgets in the Chancellor’s speech on Wednesday was “the big gap” in news for the NHS. Before the budget, Mr Hunt, who served as health secretary for six years and who has accepted he did not do enough to increase staffing levels in the NHS, said a workforce plan for the NHS was needed. In the budget documents, released after the Chancellor Rishi Sunak had finished speaking, the Treasury confirmed only that it would continue to fund workforce training and repeated existing promises around 50,000 extra nurses. But many experts including the Health Foundation and think tanks as well as NHS leaders have said what is needed is a properly costed long term workforce plan so that the NHS can train enough staff to meet future patient demand. Read full story Source: The Independent, 28 October 2021 -
News ArticleWhite doctors applying for medical posts in London are six times more likely to be offered a job than black applicants, figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show. The new data also show that white doctors are four times more likely to be successful than Asian candidates or candidates from a mixed ethnic background. The figures were uncovered by Sheila Cunliffe, a senior human resources professional who works in workforce transformation across the NHS and the wider public sector. Cunliffe sent freedom of information requests to all 18 NHS acute trusts in London asking for a breakdown by ethnicity for 2020-21 of the numbers of applicants for medical jobs, shortlisted candidates, and candidates offered positions. Twelve of the 18 trusts shared their full unredacted data with The BMJ on all grades of job applications. Across these 12 trusts, 29% (4675 of 15 853) of white applicants were shortlisted in 2020-21, compared with 13% (2041 of 15 515) of black applicants, 14% (8406 of 59 211) of Asian applicants, and 15% (1620 of 10 860) of applicants of mixed ethnicity. Overall, 7% (1148) of white applicants were offered jobs, compared with 1% (188) of black applicants, 2% (1050) of Asian applicants, and 2% (188) of applicants of mixed ethnicity. Cunliffe said that the findings were just one indicator of the barriers that applicants from ethnic minorities faced. “The racism some of these results point to will be replicated in the day-to-day lived experience of staff working within the trust,” she said. “NHSEI [NHS England and NHS Improvement] need to look at data in a more detailed way and, where needed, set out to trusts their clear expectations and targets for improvement.” Read full story Source: BMJ, 13 October 2021
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News Article
Nursing crisis sweeps wards as NHS battles to find recruits
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Ministers are being warned of a mounting workforce crisis in England’s hospitals as they struggle to recruit staff for tens of thousands of nursing vacancies, with one in five nursing posts on some wards now unfilled. Hospital leaders say the nursing shortfall has been worsened by a collapse in the numbers of recruits from Europe, including Spain and Italy. The most recent NHS figures reveal there are about 39,000 vacancies for registered nurses in England, with one in 10 nursing posts unfilled on acute wards in London and one in five nursing posts empty on mental health wards in the south-east. Thousands of nursing shifts each week cannot be filled because of staff shortages, according to hospital safe staffing reports seen by the Observer. Patricia Marquis, England director for the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said: “There just aren’t enough staff to deliver the care that is needed, and we now have a nursing workforce crisis. We should never have got into a position where we were so dependent on international nurses. We are on a knife-edge.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 9 October 2021 -
News ArticleOne in 10 posts for consultant psychiatrists in England are vacant with growing waiting times for people needing mental health treatment, experts have warned. A census of the current situations across England by the Royal College of Psychiatrists has found there is just one psychiatrist for every 12,567 people in England. Health service bosses at NHS England have acknowledged there are an estimated 1.5 million people who are waiting for mental health support amid fears the situation will worsen as the effects of the Covid pandemic become clear. This is on top of the 5.6 million patients waiting for routine operations and treatments for physical illness. The Royal College said there was a shortage of 568 empty consultant posts in the NHS out of a total of 5,367 which it said meant patients would have to wait longer for treatment. In total there are 4,500 full time consultants working in the NHS. The highest rates of unfilled positions are in the fields of addiction, eating disorders and child and adolescent psychiatry. Read full story Source: The Independent, 6 October 2021
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Content ArticleThis research by the Nuffield Trust, commissioned by NHS England and NHS Improvement, explores the business case for overseas recruitment and looks at the factors that attract or deter nurses from choosing to work in the UK. With a current NHS nursing vacancy rate of 10% and ambitious national goals to expand the workforce, recruiting nurses from overseas is an essential part of the picture. In this research, the authors look at the costs and benefits of overseas recruitment and present their findings as a briefing paper, research report and review on factors that attract or deter staff from moving to the UK.
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News ArticleLogan Giesbrecht left his dream job as an emergency room nurse when the mental health strain of an understaffed department became unbearable, even before the pandemic's fourth wave hit and anti-vaccination protesters began gathering outside hospitals. “The biggest frustration, and what I'm taking home from work, was basically doing the job of more than one nurse,” said Giesbrecht, who feared low staffing levels would risk patient safety. He quit working at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, Canada, last April. Representatives for nurses around the country are calling on the federal government to come up with a national plan to attract and retain nurses during a “crisis” they say needed action long before the uptick in cases from the Delta variant. Statistics Canada released data this week from the second quarter of 2021 showing a steep rise in job vacancies for both registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses, which are part of a single category in its analysis. Those professions had the largest increase in vacancies of all occupations over a two-year period, up by 10,400 to 22,400 - a hike of nearly 86 per cent, the agency said, adding nearly half of the vacancies had been open for 90 days or more, compared with 24 days across all occupations. Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, said it's not uncommon for some registered nursing positions to be vacant for a couple of weeks, as workers switch jobs within a hospital or health region, but having vacancies unfilled for 90 days or longer is unsustainable. Read full story Source: CP24 News, 24 September 2021
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Content Article
Swimming with the tide, a blog by Sally Howard
Sally Howard posted an article in Leadership for patient safety
We have an overwhelming demand for our healthcare services. This blog from Sally Howard suggests some things we can do to keep afloat. -
Content ArticleThis report by Roger Kline brings together a range of research evidence to suggest practical steps NHS employers can take to reduce inequalities in staff recruitment and career progression. It specifically focuses on the treatment of female, disabled and BAME staff. Written for practitioners, it summarises some of the research evidence on fair recruitment and career progression. It highlights principles drawn from research that underpin the suggestions made for improving each stage of recruitment and career progression.
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News Article
Shortfall of 50,000 doctors may overwhelm NHS in winter, BMA warns
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The NHS may be unable to cope this winter because of a “frightening” shortfall of more than 50,000 doctors, the head of the British Medical Association has warned. The number of medics in England has fallen further behind comparable European countries over the summer, ahead of what is predicted to be one of the worst winters in the 73-year history of the health service, Dr Chaand Nagpaul said. “Winter is an incredibly difficult time for the health service,” he said. “With flu season on the horizon and even fewer staff this time round, it’s a total unknown as to how well our services will cope – if they even cope at all.” With more GPs and hospital doctors quitting over the summer, the shortage has risen to 50,191, according to the BMA. This reflects a loss of 919 doctors in primary care and 110 in secondary care over the last two months. Yet more doctors are actively considering quitting in the coming months due to burnout and excessive workloads. “Alarm bells” should be ringing, Dr Nagpaul said. The workforce crisis means staff are working longer hours to keep up with patient demand. Some feel they have no choice but to hand in their notice to get the respite they need. This piles pressure on those that remain, Dr Nagpaul said. Last week, Prof Martin Marshall, the chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, told the Guardian that GPs in England are “finding it increasingly hard to guarantee safe care” for millions of patients, because the shortage of medics means they are unable to cope with soaring demand." Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 September 2021 -
Content ArticleDespite many investigations and inquiries into violent incidents in mental health settings, resulting in reports and guidelines, safety considerations for mental health staff continue to be an issue of serious concern. This report from the Royal College of Psychiatrists attempts to address the safety needs of psychiatrists. Psychiatrists from different disciplines are likely to be exposed to different degrees of threat to their safety, but no particular branch of psychiatry is immune. In the same vein, the context in which psychiatric practice is delivered will also have a bearing on the likelihood of violence, be it on in-patient units, in out-patient settings, in accident and emergency departments, in prisons and other custodial institutions, or in patients’ homes.
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News Article
End NHS staff shortages now, Boris Johnson told
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Doctors, nurses and NHS bosses have pleaded with Boris Johnson to spend billions of pounds to finally end the chronic lack of staff across the health service. The strain of working in a perpetually understaffed service is so great that it risks creating an exodus of frontline personnel, they warn the prime minister in a letter published on Wednesday. They have demanded that the government devise an urgent plan that will significantly increase the size of the workforce of the NHS in England by the time of the next general election in 2024. Their intervention comes after the latest NHS staff survey found that growing numbers of them feel their work is making them sick and that almost two-thirds believe they cannot do their jobs properly because their organisation has too few people. NHS poll shows rising toll of work stress on staff health The letter has been signed by unions and other groups representing most of the NHS’s 1.4 million-strong workforce, including the Royal College of Nursing, British Medical Association and Unison. NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation, which both represent hospital trusts, have also endorsed it, as has the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, a professional body for the UK’s 240,000 doctors. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 21 April 2021 -
News Article
Maternity units told to meet target staffing levels by next April
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
NHS maternity units have been told they have until next April to increase the numbers of midwives on wards to expected levels after a near £100 million investment. NHS England has told hospitals they must bring staffing levels for midwives up the levels needed to meet their planned demand from mothers and to ensure women get safe care. In a letter to NHS trusts, England’s chief nurse Ruth May said she expected hospitals to use their share of a recent £96 million investment by NHS England to boost staffing levels along with extra spending from local budgets. NHS England has carried out an analysis of demand and supply with Health Education England as part of a four year plan to boost the number of midwives. Hospitals are expected to set the level of midwives needed to deliver more one-to-one care and to try and ensure more than half of women see the same midwife throughout their pregnancy. Read full story Source: The Independent, 13 April 2021 -
News ArticleMaternity services are at risk because demoralised midwives are planning to quit the NHS, healthcare leaders have warned. A new report, carried out by the Institute for Public Policy Research, suggests 8,000 midwives may depart due to the “unprecedented pressure” of the coronavirus pandemic. Researchers, who surveyed about 1,000 healthcare professionals from around the country in mid-February, discovered that two-thirds reported being mentally exhausted once a week or more. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Independent, 31 March 2021
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News ArticleA quarter of NHS workers are more likely to quit their job than a year ago because they are unhappy about their pay, frustrated by understaffing and exhausted by COVID-19, a survey suggests. The findings have prompted warnings that the health service is facing a potential “deadly exodus” of key personnel just as it tries to restart normal care after the pandemic. A representative poll of 1,006 health professionals across the UK by YouGov for the IPPR thinktank found that the pandemic has left one in four more likely to leave than a year ago. That includes 29% of nurses and midwives, occupations in which the NHS has major shortages. Ministers must initiate a “new deal” for NHS staff that involves a decent pay rise, better benefits, more flexible working and fewer administrative tasks, the IPPR said. “The last 12 months have stretched an already very thin workforce to breaking point. Many are exhausted, frustrated and in need of better support. If the government does not do right by them now, more many leave their jobs,” said Dr Parth Patel, an NHS doctor and IPPR research fellow who co-wrote its new report on how the NHS can retain and recruit more staff. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 30 May 2021
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Content ArticleHealth Education England (HEE) has published a suite of resources to help support workers, employers, and integrated care systems (ICSs) prepare for the implementation of HEE’s Allied Health Profession (AHP) Support Worker Competency, Education and Career Development Framework.
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News ArticleOverseas-trained nurses have been told they can join the temporary coronavirus register without undertaking a formal “clinical assessment” in an attempt to bolster the NHS workforce as the third covid wave surges. The Nursing and Midwifery Council confirmed on Tuesday that it has invited the additional nurses in a bid to “strengthen workforce capacity in the immediate period and coming weeks”. It comes as the number of covid inpatient admissions rises sharply across the country, with London and the South East of England badly hit. At the start of the pandemic last year, the NMC asked former nurses who had left within the last three years to join the emergency covid register as cases grew. Unison union’s national nursing officer Stuart Tuckwood believed the move will help deal with “severe” staffing shortages, but warned they must be “supported and supervised” by fully registered nurses to ensure patient safety. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 6 January 2021
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News Article
Nurse gaps must be considered in NHS winter planning, warns RCN
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Planning around what the NHS can deliver this winter must be based on how many nursing staff are available and the workload they can safely take on, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has warned. Amid widespread nursing shortages, the union has called on the government to “be honest” about nurse vacancies and address what steps need to be taken to keep staff and patients safe. “It is essential that learning is applied to planning for this winter, including what service can be delivered safely with the workforce available” Last week NHS England moved to its highest level of emergency preparedness. But the RCN warned it still had grave concerns around how services would be safely staffed, claiming it was too late to find the nurses needed to meet the anticipated demands of the incoming winter. Despite an increase in the number of nurses registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council this year, the college said there were still around 40,000 nurse vacancies in the NHS in England alone. These shortages, which were felt across all areas of nursing, had been exacerbated because of staff self-isolating or being off sick because of COVID-19, the RCN noted. The impacts of workforce shortages meant there was “enormous responsibility” on the nurses working and “intolerable pressure” on senior nursing leaders, it said. Unless local staffing plans prioritised safe and high-quality care, the few nurses in post were at risk of “burn out” this winter, the college added. Read full story (paywalled) Source: Nursing Times, 9 November 2020 -
Content ArticleIn October 2001 government chief nurses and other delegates from 66 countries met to discuss how best to deal with a common challenge—the global growth of nursing shortages. In this article, James Buchan looks at potential solutions and limitations. Although written in 2002, this is still relevant for today.
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Content ArticleNina Hemmings responds to the 'State of the adult social care workforce report' from Skills for Care.
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EventuntilThis conference focuses on the delivery of ambitions in the newly published NHS People Plan, and wider priorities for the health workforce. It also takes place with: intensification of the recruitment drive for health and social care staff unprecedented personal and professional challenges for those working across the NHS in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Assessing what will be needed for ambitions in the newly published NHS People Plan to be achieved, including: improving health and wellbeing support for all staff tackling discrimination and fostering a sense of belonging adopting innovation in care and ways of working making the most of staff skills and experience recruitment, retention and encouraging previous staff to re-join the NHS plans for an additional people plan focussed on pay, based on workforce numbers and funding. Registration
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Content ArticleA lower recruitment and high turnover rate of registered nurses have resulted in a global shortage of nurses. In the UK, prior to the COVID-19 epidemic, nurses’ intention to leave rates were between 30 and 50% suggesting a high level of job dissatisfaction. In this study, published in BMC Nursing, Senek et al. analysed data from a cross-sectional mixed-methods survey developed by the Royal College of Nursing and administered to the nursing workforce across all four UK nations, to explore the levels of dissatisfaction and demoralisation – one of the predictors of nurses’ intention to leave.
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News Article
Health committee launches inquiry into NHS staff burnout
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
MPs have launched an inquiry examining workforce burnout across the NHS and social care, and the system’s ability to manage staff stress amid increased pressures during the COVID-19 pandemic. The House of Commons health and social care committee said it aims to produce a report showing the levels of staff needed in health and social care to tackle exhaustion and meet future challenges. The committee is calling for evidence on how workforce shortages impacted staff well-being and patient care during the pandemic and the areas that need to see recruitment most urgently. Read full story Source: Pulse, 3 August 2020
