Fewer hospital staff vacancies now than at start of pandemic

The figures come despite the enormous strain placed on staff.

Speaking at a recent review into the performance of University Hospital Birmingham (UHB) during the pandemic, chief operating officer Jonathan Brotherton said it was "pleasantly surprising" to see the number of vacancies down on 18 months ago, with some staff even returning to the NHS.

But he added that staff working throughout the past 15 months must be given time to recover, if the trust is to fully restore services over the coming months.

UHB treats more than 2.2 million patients every year across sites including Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, Solihull Hospital and Community Services, Good Hope Hospital in Sutton Coldfield and Birmingham Chest Clinic.

And the trust was the hardest hit in the country, according to papers from this week’s joint health overview and scrutiny committee, with 40 per cent more Covid admissions than the next trust.

Much has been made of the impact of the pandemic on hospital staff, with some areas of the country seeing an increase in vacancies in recent weeks and months.

However Mr Brotheron said that this was not the case for UHB – thought he did admit that the pandemic had come as a timely reminder to some staff to leave the profession.

“We have fewer vacancies in our workforce now than we had before the pandemic, which is actually pleasantly surprising given the traumatic events that the teams have been through,” he said.

“So presently we have about 450 qualified nurse vacancies, but bear in mind we have an establishment with over 5,000 qualified nurses.

“So the position is difficult, the recruitment is essential, and we’re very confident of the demands that we’re placing on our teams.

“Because in order to restore services as quickly as we can, we have to afford staff the time to recover themselves. Because this hasn’t been an incident that’s lasted for a day or a week, this is a very chronic problem and it’s going to be with us for some time, let alone any further surges that we may need to deal with as well.

“I don’t have to hand the number of medical staff vacancies or indeed the allied health professional vacancies, but I would just like the committee to rest assured that the vacancy numbers haven’t significantly increased, and in a number of professions like I said has actually reduced slightly as we’ve gone through this.

“We’ve managed to attract a number of people to return back to the NHS, which has been fantastic. Some of the staff that were deployed into unfamiliar areas such as the ITU and whatnot have actually opted to stay and indeed return and do additional shifts there, because of the experiences they had and the camaraderie, the general sense of achievement and fulfillment they have.

“But we have lost out as a result of the pandemic, there are people that have said that they will see us through the latest wave, but it’s made their mind up that they now need to go and take their retirement, or do the thing they’ve always wanted to do.”