EDP: Mental health trust struggling to fill nursing shifts on region’s inpatient wards

Nicholas Carding of the Eastern Daily Press reports:

Staffing levels at mental health wards are under the spotlight today after figures revealed a reduction of permanently employed nurses filling shifts.

Figures show the trust’s fill-rate of nurses employed by NSFT is fluctuating between 80pc-90pc, meaning managers have to use extra funds to bring in temporary staff or upskill care support workers.

By comparison the trust’s fill-rate last summer was between 87pc-95pc.

But RCN’s eastern region director Karen Webb said mental health trusts had to demonstrate commitment to safe staffing levels to attract and keep nurses.

She also said people should be concerned about the plans to remove bursaries for student nurses, claiming the idea is a “dangerous gamble”.

Of course, Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT), far from showing a ‘commitment to safe staffing levels to attract and keep nurses’, wasted £17.25 million of taxpayers’ money paying experienced and highly-trained staff to leave, many of them by compulsory redundancy.

Click on the image to read the article in full on the EDP website:

EDP Mental health trust struggling to fill nursing shifts on regions inpatient wards

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