Podcast transcript

This is Anne McCubbin here to talk with Neil Craig about our Planning Ward Nursing report. Neil, what did the report find?

The report’s about hospitals’ workforce planning. It looks at developments in nursing workforce planning since we published our first report on this topic in 2002. 

It looks at issues such as strategies for recruitment and retention of the workforce, including trends in the management of bank and agency nursing staff.

We find that the NHS in Scotland has laid the foundations for better workforce planning in the future and the service can now build on that progress.

So there have been improvements since 2002..?

Yes, indeed. Vacancies have been falling since 2005 and long term vacancy rates are quite low. 

The use of agency nurses has fallen since 2002 and the management of bank nurses is improving.

Better information is being developed on the nursing workforce, nursing workload and the quality of nursing.

The report says that the use of temporary nurses has gone up by 43%. Why has this happened?

There has been an increase of 43% in the use of temporary nurses. But it is also worth considering that there has been a cut in the use of nurses from agencies and a growth in the use of bank nurses. These are good things.

The growth in the use of bank nursing has happened partly as a result of substituting for agency nurses and also because NHS Scotland has been actively promoting bank nursing as another possible way of meeting temporary staffing needs and providing opportunities for people to come into the nursing workforce this way.

The rise is also due to using bank nurses to cover vacancies and to meet short term needs such as meeting waiting times targets. This underlies a need to keep the growth of bank and agency nursing under review as part of the wider workforce planning process.

So what should happen next to follow up this report?

The NHS in Scotland needs to further develop the information on the nursing workforce, the existing workload and the quality of nursing care. 

It also needs to ensure that there are adequate skills among senior nursing staff to contribute to the workforce planning process. As part of that, it’s also important that sufficient protected time is built in to allow senior staff to develop managerial roles. The NHS also needs to ensure that there’s enough cover to cover periods of absence due to factors such as annual leave and sickness absence. 

Thanks very much Neil.