NHS waiting list: nurse numbers outpaced by expanding backlog
Posted 16 November 2023 - 13:17
Rise in nurse numbers fails to come close to increase in waits for NHS appointments as nursing leader urges ministers to invest in pay and nursing degrees
The NHS waiting list is growing more than four times faster than the nursing workforce, analysis suggests, prompting warnings from nursing leaders about dangerous staff shortages.
Figures published by the RCN suggest the waiting list for elective care has grown significantly faster than nurse recruitment since the government’s 2019 manifesto pledge to employ 50,000 more nurses in England’s NHS by March 2024.
The college said there was a 16% increase in full-time equivalent nurses from September 2019 to August 2023 – rising from 300,904 to 348,182. However, the NHS waiting list has expanded by 70%, from 4.5 million to 7.8 million appointments in the same period. The number of people waiting is estimated at 6.5 million, according to NHS England.
High patient volume, nurse shortages and unsafe care
RCN director for England Patricia Marquis said: ‘Not a single nurse will say it feels like there are more staff now – they say the opposite.
‘When demand is so high, staffing levels become dangerously inadequate. It is unsafe for patients and professionals when one nurse cares for ten, 15 or more patients at a time and beds are put in corridors or other inappropriate places.’
Alongside staff shortages, the RCN warned against expensive, unsustainable and unethical reliance on overseas recruitment.
A Downing Street letter to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in February 2020, and now shared with the COVID-19 Inquiry, shows the government intended to rely on ‘notable additional international recruitment’ to hit its nurse workforce target.
Almost half of NMC registrants in the year to March 2023 were recruited from overseas. The UK has long been criticised for the extent of its use of overseas nurses, especially when coming from ‘red list’ countries – where active recruitment is not permitted by the World Health Organization.
Nurse workforce can’t retain and expand without investment
The RCN called on the government to do more to expand the domestic workforce, saying that the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan needed to be funded adequately to meet its ambition of recruiting up to 190,000 more nurses by 2037. It wants new health and social care secretary Victoria Atkins to abolish tuition fees for nursing students and improve pay to boost recruitment and retention.
Ms Marquis added: ‘The new health secretary must secure urgent investment in the nursing workforce now to keep the staff we already have and recruit a new generation.’
The DHSC said cutting waiting lists was one of the government’s top five priorities and 18-month waits had come down by more than 90% from their peak in September 2021.
A spokesperson added the long-term workforce plan is backed by more than £2.4 billion.
In other news