Potential 36,000 NHS nursing job

By Candy Lashkari

While nurses may lose their jobs to make the figures for the NHS seem more efficient there is a good chance of it affecting actual performance. The NHS needs to save £20bn by 2014. That would be a saving of 5% of its budget. The easiest way to do this would be by enforcing job cuts of health staff and thousands of nursing jobs are at risk as per the Royal College of Nursing general secretary, Peter Carter.

“We are in no doubt that politicians genuinely want to protect frontline services and the vital care they deliver to patients. However, there appears to be a gulf between rhetoric and reality. Despite assurances that the NHS budget will be protected, the reality is that locally, trusts are making deep and dangerous cuts to staff numbers now, with further cuts planned for the future.” said Peter Carter.

The RCN did a survey of 26 of the 168 English health trusts and found that 5,600 jobs had already been earmarked for cuts in a bid to cut costs as per requirement. According to Howard Catton, head of policy at RCN, the trend was being replicated all over the country. In a worst case scenario, that would mean a cut of 36,000 nursing jobs.

Joyce Robbins of Patient Concern said that "Plans to reduce the budget will inevitably mean less staff to care for patients." This was reflected in an online survey conducted by the RCN on 287 nurses. Most hospital wards were already working with 13% less staff than needed. And 9 on 10 nurses agreed that patient care was being seriously compromised due to this short staffing and it happened on all shifts.

"Despite assurances that the NHS budget will be protected, the reality is that trusts are making deep and dangerous cuts to staff numbers now, with further cuts planned for the future. We would urge whichever party forms the next government to work with the RCN to devise ways of making the savings that we know are possible within the NHS, whilst protecting front-line care.” said Peter Carter.

The nurses union with 400,000 members has considerable political clout. This fact was driven home when Prime Minister Brown addressed the conference last year. Health secretary Andrew Burnham tried to reduce the fear of job cuts by saying that the saving in the budget were more likely to come from wage restraint and management cost cutting, and asking "some nurses and doctors to take on different roles in different locations outside of hospitals".

In response the shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, said: "We will back the NHS. Conservatives will increase funding for the NHS each year in real terms. So instead of Labour's cuts to doctors and nurses, we will support the recruitment of staff we need, like specialist nurses, midwives and health visitors."