NHS: Scrambling for More British Nurses

Reforms to brace the NHS for the looming damage of Brexit and growing staffing shortages have been unveiled by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, prompting a sceptical welcome from nurses and other medical workers.

Hunt announced the funding of new training places for 5000 nurses and 5500 less-trained “nursing associates” each year, promised to improve support and working conditions for existing NHS staff and told staff from the EU that he was “confident” their rights would not be undermined after Brexit.

Addressing the Conservative Party’s annual conference amid rising tensions with NHS unions over cost-cutting, wage restraint and staff shortages, Hunt made a special plea to employees from the EU, many of whom have already started to leave the NHS since the Brexit vote.

“There’s one group who are understandably a bit worried at the moment and that’s the 150,000 EU workers in the health and care system,” he said. “Let me say to them this: you do a fantastic job, we want you to stay and I am confident you will be able to stay with the same rights you have now.”

Hunt did not describe the new home-grown training positions and his package of staff sweeteners – such as more flexible shifts and the right to apply for new affordable homes built on NHS land – as a response to Brexit but the NHS staffing shortage has been pushed to crisis level by the growing difficulty of recruiting EU workers since the Brexit referendum.

Jane Dacre, the president of the Royal College of Physicians, said Hunt did not go nearly far enough to reassure workers from the EU, who had been living with uncertainty about their future status while watching the pound tumble since the Brexit vote.

“What was concerning was the lack of support for our colleagues from overseas,” she said. “We all need to work hard to ensure staff working in our NHS feel supported, wherever they are from, and frankly stating that the government is ‘confident that they will be able to stay’ is just not good enough.”

“Currently, a quarter of NHS doctors are from overseas, and the NHS has benefitted from their talents, abilities and will to work with us in the UK – this government and the secretary of state must do more, despite the insecurity caused by the Brexit situation, to reassure those who have chosen to dedicate their working lives to the NHS, that they are valued, and more importantly, greatly needed.” Dacre said understaffing had become one of the biggest threats to patient safety and had significantly undermined morale in the NHS.

Janet Davies, the general secretary of the nurses’ union, the Royal College of Nursing, expressed fears that Hunt was trying to “plug the gaps” in the NHS with students and lesser-trained workers. “Significant increases to training numbers is welcome – we desperately need more nurses.

However, they must be educated to the highest standards. We are concerned at the risk of students plugging the gaps in the current workforce at the expense of quality patient care and their own learning experience.”

There are an estimated 40,000 unfilled nursing vacancies in the NHS. Apart from the new difficulty of recruiting and retaining nurses from the EU, the number of domestic training places were slashed by the Tory Government between 2010 and 2013 and former Chancellor George Osborne later exacerbated the shortage by scrapping £6,000 annual bursaries for trainee nurses. Replacing the bursaries with loans that needed to be repaid on top of the £9,000 tuition fees for nursing courses led to a 23% slump in applications to nursing and midwifery courses and an 8% drop in the number accepted.

The Health Secretary did not give any indication of whether the 1% pay cap would be lifted for NHS workers,  despite the RCN planning a strike ballot on the issue after seven years of “austerity” and below-inflation wage rises. “We need more nurses,” he said. “Today I can tell you we will increase the number of nurses we train by 25% – that’s a permanent increase of more than 5,000 training places every single year.”

“We will also improve retention rates amongst our current workforce with new flexible working arrangements to be made available to all NHS staff, and a new right of first refusal for affordable housing built on NHS property.” Workers would be able to work additional shifts at short notice, get paid more quickly and have more control over pension contributions, and the affordable housing promise could benefit up to 3,000 families.

 

by Peter Wilson

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