- Conference
- 2022 Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 10 December 2021
- Decision
- Carried
This Conference notes the last twelve months has seen a significant nursing staffing crisis develop within all of the countries of the United Kingdom. Staffing shortages have increased on an almost daily basis over the last year to the extent that regions and individual hospital and community services are now experiencing nursing vacancies of up to 20%. These shortages are due to persistent and deliberate decision making, mainly of Conservative Governments, to underfund the NHS, to increase workload and to make the NHS a less attractive place to work. This Conference believes these actions are deliberate and are aimed at undermining the NHS in an attempt to inflame public disenchantment in order to make privatisation more palatable.
This Conference believes that during the past twelve months lives have been lost and health impacted on by these staffing shortages. While recognising and appreciating the valuable contribution made by retired staff, nursing students, overseas nurses and military nurses in the past twelve months this Conference believes these are only stopgap measures that are not sustainable in the long term, and without significant changes and improvements in nursing and midwifery recruitment there will continue to be lives needlessly lost and long term health damage to patients throughout the UK as nursing and midwifery staff continue to leave the NHS. This is on top of the damage to the mental and physical well being of NHS staff who continue to work to provide world class care to those at a time of their most vulnerability.
This Conference believes the Health Service Group Executive have well represented the concerns and fears of our members on the subject of staffing in the last twelve months. In going forward this Conference calls on the Health Service Group Executive to campaign and lobby the UK and devolved Governments on the following issues:
a. to recognise that in order to recruit and retain nurses and midwives within the NHS it is essential to have a fair remuneration package for staff of which pay is the central plank. To this end NHS staff need to be awarded a pay increase in 2022/23 that is higher than inflation in order to recover some of the losses of the last ten years.
b. to invest in and retain older and more experienced experienced staff within the NHS.
c. to review educational routes of entry into the nursing and midwifery professions, particularly encouraging apprenticeship routes for staff currently within the NHS.
d. to initiate and build significant further education and professional development schemes to be offered to all nursing staff to develop learning and progression.
e. to ensure ethical recruitment of nursing staff from abroad particularly from those countries which already have significant nursing and midwifery staff shortages.