Hospital pays ?1,800 a day for a nurse in NHS staff crisis

[Northerner]

NHS hospitals are hiring agency nurses at rates of up ?1,800 a day in a bid to plug dangerous staff shortages, an investigation has found.

The bill for temporary workers has risen by more than 20 per cent in just one year, with private agencies receiving more than seven times the rate paid to nurses on the pay roll.

Experts said the disclosures show how cost-cutting efforts have backfired, with thousands of frontline posts being cut - only for agency nurses to be hired at vastly inflated rates, when wards became short-staffed.

The use of temporary staff has become endemic in the NHS, with almost every trust in the country now relying on private agencies to plug gaps in staffing.

Hospital trusts with soaring bills for agency workers include nine which were identified last week as having dangerously low staffing levels, according to rulings by the official safety watchdog.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...00-a-day-for-a-nurse-in-NHS-staff-crisis.html

 

[trophywench]

Think the nurses actually get paid more too by being temps.

I know way back when I had an op in a BUPA hospital I said to one of the night staff, I preferred her style of hat, much more flattering than the norm, and what did that signify? and she said it signified she was an Agency nurse LOL and told me it was a good deal more lucrative than working for either the NHS or BUPA, even by taking exactly whatever holiday she wanted or needed, some unpaid, not doing shifts she didn't fancy and paying into a private pension.

 

[Abi]

Serious need to review the way staff are treated, morale, sense of worth etc ( including enough time and training to do the job properly, sufficient breaks etc etc) so that they are more willing to work the extra shifts if short staffed. I'm not talking about massive self sacrifice, heroism etc but perhaps more a sense of vocation