‘IF YOU want to talk about waste in the NHS, then stop outsourcing midwives and nurses to agency staff,’ Royal College of Midwives (RCM) director of policy Jon Skews said yesterday in response to the Tory health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s latest attack on NHS staff.
Doctors’ union BMA, nurses’ union RCN and midwives’ union RCM were united in slamming Hunt’s claims that £2.5bn is wasted in the NHS because of a ‘dangerous nexus between poor care and higher cost’.
All three unions underlined the fact that patient safety was being compromised because of staff shortages.
In a speech at Birmingham Children’s hospital yesterday, Hunt claimed doctors, nurses’ and staff were giving patients the wrong drugs, that they allowed patients to develop bed sores, infections after surgery, and contract the blood infection sepsis, and that all of this added up to costs of £2.5bn.
Jon Skewes from the RCM responded: ‘The waste in the NHS that Jeremy Hunt presides over includes the £1bn spent this year alone on agency staff brought in because of a shortage of midwives and nurses.
‘The way to stop wastage in the NHS is to employ more midwives and pay them fairly. Our members were on strike for the first time in 133 years early this week.’
RCN commented: ‘Invest in staff first, then safer care will follow.’
Dr Peter Carter, Chief Executive and General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said: ‘Falls and preventable conditions such as pressure ulcers happen when there are not enough staff on a ward to care properly for every patient, not because nurses are unaware that these things should be prevented.’
Dr Mark Porter, leader of the British Medical Association, said: ‘Frontline budgets are falling and doctors are overstretched in key specialities such as general practice and emergency care, and a system that too often refuses to listen to its professional staff and their concerns.’
