The Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) has published a report, "Workforce planning for nurses and midwives' in Northern Ireland. It reveals that more than one in ten registered nursing posts in Northern Ireland were vacant in late 2019, with annual spend on temporary nursing staff reaching £115 million. The report finds that total HSC nursing and midwifery staffing vacancies have risen very significantly, from 770 in 2013 to over 2,700 in 2019. These vacancies include 2,100 unfilled registered nursing posts, with as many as 1,600 additional nurses also required to ensure safe staffing levels.
Pat Cullen, Director of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in Northern Ireland said:
“This important report illustrates clearly issues the RCN has been raising on behalf of nurses in Northern Ireland for years. Indeed, this is precisely why nursing staff felt they had no other choice but to take strike action during December and January.
“Despite this issue being high on the agenda over the past few years, it will still come as a shock to most people that one in ten registered nursing posts here is vacant. Put simply, we do not currently have the right number of nurses to provide all of the care that the people of Northern Ireland need and deserve.
“This report makes it clear that for far too long, workforce planning for nursing has been driven by short-term financial considerations resulting in nursing posts and pre-registration nursing student places being cut. As we warned at the time, this has resulted in using much more expensive temporary staff from internal banks and external agencies to cover the gaps. Some of the costs are shocking.
“As the report suggests, the short-term decisions that were taken have created a much larger problem that will take longer to resolve. This is one of the reasons why it is so important that we have safe nurse staffing legislation implemented in Northern Ireland as soon as possible. If there had been legislation when these decisions were taken, we wouldn’t have ended up in the mess we are in now, which will cost much more to rectify.
“We welcome the publication of this report and recognise that the safe staffing framework published by the Health Minister, following industrial action by nurses and other health care staff, will begin to address many of the problems highlighted by the NIAO. However, we also know it may take several years before we see the outcome of these changes and achieve a more stable workforce.
“Work on safe nurse staffing legislation must begin now. We simply cannot afford for this to happen again. We are also concerned that in the RCN’s latest employment survey it was revealed that 36% of nursing staff were considering leaving the profession due to poor staffing, poor pay and how they have been treated.
“Nurses have rightly been recognised for their unprecedented contribution during this pandemic. Now is the time to ensure that this recognition translates into action –that includes ensuring we have the right numbers of nurses in the right places – and that nurses are properly rewarded, and treated equally, to similar professions.”
