Parts of NHS England only able to fill one in 400 nursing vacancies
Recruitment and Retention is a huge issue in rural areas in terms of the NHS and this story helps illustrate how big. It tells us:
The number of nursing vacancies has jumped by 2,626 (8.3%) over the past year from 31,634 to 34,260, according to NHS Digital’s analysis of posts advertised on NHS Jobs, the health service’s main recruitment website. However NHS Digital stressed that trusts can also employ nurses using other means.
The figures confirm other recent evidence that the health service is now seeing more nurses leave than join for the first time in its history. Last week the NHS’s statistical arm disclosed that one in 10 of all nurses now quits each year. Statistics it released then showed that during 2016-17, just under 33,500 nurses left the service – 3,000 more than joined and 20% higher than the number who quit in 2012-13.
Hospitals in Surrey – where health and social care secretary Jeremy Hunt is an MP – and Kent and Sussex are also failing to recruit enough nurses and midwives.
Between April and June, NHS bodies managed to recruit just 303 of the 3,225 nurses and midwives they needed – a success rate of 9.4%. The West Midlands had the highest success rate (42.4%) with such staff, closely followed by the north-east (39.4%) and Yorkshire and the Humber (27.4%).
The overall number of vacancies for all types of staff – including doctors, scientific, therapists, administrative and clerical personnel – which hospitals across England advertised to fill in July to September hit 87,964.
That was also the highest number since NHS Digital began collecting vacancy data in April 2105 and publishing it quarterly. The figures show that NHS bodies were also short of 10,498 doctors and dentists in that quarter.