That figure is up sharply from the 1,011 patients who had to wait 12 hours or more at York A&E.
In response to a series of Freedom of Information questions tabled by the press, managers at York Hospitals also admitted:
- 499 York Hospitals Trust nurses or other medical staff have taken time off due to stress or other mental health-related reasons in the last six months.
- The hospital trust last year spent £9.5m on expensive agency nurses and another £18.6m on ‘bank’ nurses to fill staff vacancies – as well as more than $1.9m recruiting nurses and other medical staff internationally. more .
The statistics paint a picture of exhausted staff and an organization struggling to cope.
That was confirmed by a nurse at York Hospital, speaking to the press on condition of anonymity. “I have never known staff morale to be so low,” they said.
“I feel that patients are helpless every day. It is discouraging. The NHS is broken and we cannot carry on as we are.
“We got the pressure of the winter – but since Covid, that pressure never leaves us. We get the pressure of winter in July.
The number of staff taking time out from York Hospitals Trust for stress or other mental health-related problems is a clear indication of staff under constant pressure, the nurse said.
The trust – which runs York and Scarborough hospitals as well as smaller hospitals and rehabilitation units in Selby, Moulton, Easingwald and elsewhere – stressed that its nursing vacancy rate had fallen from 11 due to ‘good international and local recruitment’. percent now, up from 6.1 percent of all positions a year ago.
Recommended reading: York Hospital: ‘Our challenges in emergency care continue’
But the nurse, who spoke to the media, said the trust spends millions recruiting internationally to fill staff vacancies, while the UK fails to train enough nursing staff at home, so the NHS can hire locally.
Nurses used to get learning aids, the nurse said. Now, they are paying £9,000 a year to do a nursing degree – thousands of pounds in debt by the time they graduate. It was very discouraging, said the nurse. “Is it any wonder we can’t recruit?”
York Hospitals Trust says it makes every effort to support the health and wellbeing of its staff.
Staffing levels in individual hospital wards were reviewed on a ‘shift by shift’ basis, and staffing levels could be increased depending on the number of patients on a ward and the complexity of their condition, it said.
The trust says it employs 115 mental health first aiders to look after the mental health of staff – and holds regular staff health, mental health and health promotion events.
Staff also have access to professional health advice and a ‘confidential care service’ available 24/7 every day of the year.
But York Central MP Rachael Maskell, who worked as an NHS physiotherapist before becoming a Labor MP, said: “Staff in the NHS are burnt out.
“These talented professionals who have looked after us through Covid and continued to do so through the ongoing crisis are completely exhausted physically, mentally and emotionally.
“With the level of ongoing pressure, staff know that if there were more of them, things could be better for them and their patients.
“What breaks a doctor is knowing you can’t provide the care you were trained to provide.”
She said the new Labor government was determined to rebuild the NHS – as the Blair government had been since 1997.
“Things are worse now (than then), but Labor is determined to rebuild our NHS as we did then,” she said.
Costs of using agency nurses to fill staffing gaps
Using bank and agency nurses to fill in when there aren’t enough staff nurses to cover shifts is expensive – and a waste of scarce NHS money.
That’s because the rate paid to a bank or agency nurse to cover a shift is much higher than the rate paid to a staff nurse of the same grade.
Hospitals such as York usually have an internal ‘bank’ of nurses prepared to work extra shifts – for better pay. These are often called bank nurses. Agency nurses, meanwhile, are staff provided by an outside agency.
According to pay scales set by NHS Employers for 2023/4, a Band 5 staff nurse at the top of their band can expect to be paid £17.69 an hour. A Band 5 bank nurse at the same place on the pay scale, meanwhile, can expect to be paid £23.12 an hour – a similar agency nurse would earn £24.06 an hour. A payment will also be made to the agency that supplied them.
Because of staff shortages, York Hospital admits it spent £9.5m on agency nurses and HCAs last year – and £18.6m on bank nurses. Without knowing the ranks of imported bank and agency staff, it is impossible to imagine how much it would have saved if the hospital trust had managed to fill all its shifts with ordinary staff nurses – but it would have been millions of pounds. .
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