‘AS WE begin a new year, the NHS is buckling before our eyes. The pressures are immense with flu cases surging while staff absences rise dramatically,’ Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Director for England, Patricia Marquis, said yesterday.
‘On top of this, the vast majority of adult general and acute hospital beds are full – around 94% – including tens of thousands of patients who are fit to be discharged but cannot be because of a severe lack of community and social care services.
‘A key part of the problem is the record nursing vacancies across health and social care. But until nurses are paid fairly and appropriately, even more will leave the profession. The workforce crisis will get worse and patients will suffer.
‘Ministers can begin to fix this by valuing the nursing profession properly and paying nurses fairly in order to retain and recruit the staff that patients need.’
Dr Julia Patterson, founder of EveryDoctor (doctors campaigning group against NHS privatisation), said yesterday: ‘During the pandemic we had four million people calling for treatment, we now have over seven million people waiting for treatment, so it has got significantly worse.
‘However, it’s not all been caused by the pnademic. Last year we saw hundreds and hundreds of NHS staff leaving their jobs every single week.
‘We are now missing almost 10% of the entire NHS workforce in England and the government keep making these claims that they are building the workforce, but you can’t compare new staff that are being brought in with the experienced staff that are leaving the service.
‘There is an experience there of years and years often that we are losing because we are not supporting people… There’s also an enormous problem about senior doctors, consultants in the NHS, who are being stopped from working extra hours because they are being taxed so much from this government that it actually works out they are being charged to go to work.
‘So they are cutting their hours down. It is absolutely ludicrous. The government knows this is happening. Jeremy Hunt is well aware of this problem, and has known about it for months and months and has failed to take action.’
Up to 500 patients in the UK are dying each week, due to emergency care delays, prompted by industrial actions and shortage of staff across the British hospitals, a senior healthcare official has warned.
Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), said: ‘What we’re seeing now in terms of these long waits is being associated with increased mortality, and we think somewhere between 300-500 people are dying as a consequence of delays and problems with urgent and emergency care each week.’
Tim Cooksley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: ‘There has never been a greater recognition amongst all staff that our current situation is worse than it has ever been.
‘There is a complete acceptance from all colleagues now that this is different from all previous winters – and we need urgent action now.’