NHS recruits put off by tough conditions, warns chief Dudley nurse
Tough conditions in A&E departments are putting off new recruits from joining the NHS, a chief Black Country nurse has warned.
Mary Sexton made the comment as it was revealed Dudley’s Russells Hall Hospital has faced recruitment problems.
When the Dudley hospital advertised for new junior doctors this summer, the hospital received 122 job applications from abroad but just one from inside the UK.
And this is not an isolated incident. Consultant Ashish Singal, who runs the hospital's A&E department, said it is happening in other hospital departments and across the UK.
Ms Sexton, chief nurse at Russells Hall Hospital, said: “Demand is really difficult. I think you can say the period of austerity has had impacts on the amount of money available to support and the demand that is on our system.
“I have worked in the health service for 36 years and I can honestly tell you the past couple of years have been some of the toughest that we have had to experience.
“There is an issue around junior doctors generally. There is an issue around people willing to go into emergency medicine because it is demanding and hard work.
“There is a lot of unknown and a lot of risk. I think as a national picture it is not really growing.
“We are not making it attractive enough for people to want to go and work in there.”
She said she believed more should be done to open up NHS career pathways to young people.
One suggestion is to focus more on apprenticeships – but she said more needed to be done with pupils at a younger age.
She added: “There is something around getting people early to start thinking about this as a career.
“I don’t think previously we have done that as well as we could. I think people thought unless they have got lots of qualifications, they can’t work in the NHS.”
