YP Comment: Nursing crisis

Nursing staff are the backbone of the NHS, yet there are tens of thousands of unfilled posts, which is a key factor in the financial pressures that the service faces, as budgets are stretched by the need to employ agency nurses at often exorbitant rates to cover gaps and maintain safety standards.

The Royal College of Nursing’s assertion that low pay is partly responsible for the shortage of nurses cannot be ignored, especially since caps on public sector pay have resulted in a 14 per cent cut in their wages in real terms since 2010.

Significantly, it is not only the union that is raising the issue of pay and its effect on recruitment. NHS trust leaders have made the same point within the last week, which is indicative that this is not a question of industrial relations, but a matter of the practicalities of making a creaking health system work.

There are never any easy answers on NHS funding. A growing and ageing population places the service under relentlessly increasing pressures with each passing year.

But what is certain is that it cannot hope to address those pressures without adequate numbers of highly skilled nurses.

A solution must be found to recruiting more of them and paying wages that make the profession both attractive to newcomers and able to retain experienced staff.