One in ten nursing positions and thousands of doctor posts are lying vacant, trusts and health boards have said.
Around two-thirds of UK trusts and health boards, struggling to cope with a shortage of qualified staff, are seeking applicants from abroad to fill the vacancies, a freedom of information request by the BBC showed. Some were travelling as far as India and the Philippines.
The vacancy rate for doctors is seven per cent and for nurses 10 per cent compared with the Office of National Statistics’ average for the economy at large from between November 2015 and January 2016 of 2.7 per cent.
The data shows that on December 1 2015, the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland had more than 23,443 vacant nursing posts and 6,207 doctor vacancies – and 106 out of 166 trusts in the regions also responded with information on the increase in vacancies over the last three years.
Full story in The Independent 29 February 2016.