Shropshire hospitals trust in recruitment drive as more nurses quit job

This follows new figures which show the number of nurses and midwives leaving the profession has risen 51 per cent in just four years.

New figures from the Nursing and Midwifery Council show that for the first time in recent history more midwives and nurses are leaving the register than are joining.

The overall number of leavers – which includes UK, overseas and EU registrants – has increased from 23,087 in 2012/13 to 34,941 in 2016/17.

Shrewsbury & Telford Hospitals NHS Trust (SaTH) paid £1.48 million in January and £1.42 million in February for agency and bank nurses to fill staffing gaps.

The trust says other hospitals across the country are facing similar recruitment problems and that its priority is making sure there are enough nurses to safely look after patients.

Simon Wright, chief executive of SATH, said: "We have recently appointed four midwives and we have vacancies for three at the moment, so we are going out to advert again. We have never had a problem recruiting midwives until recently."

Deirdre Fowler, director of nursing, midwifery and quality at SATH, said: "Our ambition is to recruit permanent doctors and nurses to join us in our hospitals. This is far better than relying on agency staff who cost more money and are unable to provide the same continuity of care to our patients.

"Our trust is not alone in experiencing difficulties in recruitment and we have needed to employ agency staff, which includes locums, to ensure we have enough staff on duty to provide safe care for our patients.

“We are continuing our efforts to recruit permanent staff to fill vacancies, including recruitment days for staff nurses and health care assistants."

Ms Fowler urged anyone interested in working at the trust to visit its website.

She said: “Find out more about job opportunities at SaTH at sath.nhs.uk/working-with-us.”

Janet Davies, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “Patients are paying the price for the Government’s failure to plan for the future and it looks set to get worse.

“With more people leaving than joining, the NHS will be further than ever from filling the 40,000 vacant nurse jobs in England alone.

“The average nurse is £3,000 worse off in real-terms compared to 2010.

“The one per cent cap means nursing staff can no longer afford to stay in the profession and scrapping student funding means people can no longer afford to join it.”

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “We are making sure we have the nurses we need to continue delivering world-class patient care. That’s why there are almost 13,100 more on our wards since May 2010 and 52,000 in training.

“We also know we need to retain our excellent nurses and earlier this week we launched a national programme to ensure nurses have the support they need to continue their vital work.”