The alarm bells about the severity of the staff shortages in health care are sounding ever more frequently.
Two months ago the annual NHS staff survey results revealed that the proportion of nurses and midwives in the West Midlands who believe staffing is sufficient was down on the previous year.
Lower not just in the case of one or two hospitals here and there. Not a blip. Not an exception to the rule.
Down in every single one of the region’s 24 provider trusts.
Falling to the depths of seriousness where, in some trusts, as few as one in seven nursing staff feel there are enough of them to look after patients properly.
Warning signs
Fast forward a few weeks, and another warning sign: the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s annual report of who has joined and left its register.
In its report, the NMC itself cautioned that there are, in fact, two warning signs beneath the headline news of three quarters of a million people – a record high – now on its register.
The first of these is the slow pace of growth among registrants trained in the UK. Fewer joined the register in 2021/22 than in 2019/20 and the number of joiners is only marginally more than last year.
Secondly, the recent yearly falls in the number of people leaving the register have suddenly reversed. In 2021/22, the number of leavers rose by 13% compared to a year earlier.
Then, a few days on from the publication of the NMC’s data came the latest set of NHS vacancy statistics showing the shortage of nurses across the Midlands has worsened – up by more than 500 to 7,797 in the year to the end of March.
Our region’s workforce and, without question, our patients are missing nearly 8,000 nurses; one in every nine posts is empty.
Today
And so, to today.
Today, at RCN Congress in Glasgow, we heard more stark and sobering evidence of the scale of the staffing crisis.
Among West Midlands members who responded to our survey about their experience of their most recent shift, more than eight out of ten said staffing levels on the shift were unsafe for patients, and only a quarter of shifts had the planned full complement of nurses on duty.
As one respondent puts it: “The Government is not supporting basic working conditions. There is no way that I will stay in this job long term. It is simply not worth the stress or the low pay.”
Enough is enough. It’s abundantly clear. There aren’t enough nurses.
The Government made a manifesto commitment to deliver 50,000 more nurses in the NHS by 2024, yet we’re now halfway through the current Parliamentary term and the nurse staffing crisis is deepening.
It’s time for the Government to heed the warning signs and assure everyone it knows what enough is – and that it has a credible plan to ensure there are enough.
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