Staff shortages are threatening the NHS | Letters

The recruitment crisis shows just how badly the government is managing the NHS (Report, 4 February). The proportion of doctors joining specialist training in the UK – including general practice – has fallen for the fifth year running, with just over 50% of doctors who completed the foundation programme going on to enter British specialist training – compared with 71% in 2011, according to the figures from the UK Foundation Programme Office.

GP recruitment has slumped by 20% and a recent report by the National Audit Office warned that poor access to GPs during the working day could be fuelling Britain’s A&E crisis. It said that rising numbers of patients are being forced to wait a month to see a family doctor, with estimates of a shortage of up to 10,000 GPs by 2020.

Almost every hospital in the UK has a shortage of nurses, but the government has confirmed plans to end bursaries for student nurses and midwives from next year. At the same time the number of nurses from Europe registering to work here since the Brexit referendum has fallen by 90%. Janet Davies, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “If this is the beginning of a long-term drop in the number of nurses coming to the UK from other parts of the EU, that’s a serious concern at a time when we’re already facing a crisis in nurse staffing numbers. With 24,000 nursing vacancies across the UK, the NHS could not cope without the contribution from EU nurses. Without a guarantee that EU nationals working in the NHS can remain, it will be much harder to retain and recruit staff from the EU.”

Without staff the NHS cannot function effectively and the march towards privatisation will become unstoppable.
Dr Richard Turner
Harrogate, North Yorkshire

• The government was warned when it removed nursing bursaries it was risking the future of our NHS. Now the reality is becoming clear – fewer people willing to train to work in our hospitals, putting our health system under even greater strain. We already have a huge shortfall in nursing staff, and now the government is making it even worse. At the same time, the government’s half-baked plans to crack down on EU immigration have left 10% of those working in our NHS in limbo. The government cannot go on telling people it cares about the future of the NHS while it cuts support for training, stands by while nurses’ salaries suffer a massive drop in real terms and allows spending per person to sink to dangerous levels.
Norman Lamb MP
Liberal Democrat health spokesman

• As cancellations, delays, and rationing of non-urgent surgery increase in the NHS (1,700 face long surgery delays amid cash crisis, 3 February) the government remains surprisingly unfazed. But if, as I assume, most of its members would buy themselves out of trouble through private medicine, why not?
Michael Sheldon
Norwich

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Staff shortages are threatening the NHS | Letters