April 2019
The Express reports that the latest NHS England figures show there are 39,148 nursing vacancies and 8,953 unfilled medical staff jobs including doctors, oncologists and paediatricians resulting in a critical NHS staffing crisis, campaigners reveal. Experts warn that failure to recruit enough frontline workers will see the health service placed “on life support” with patients waiting longer in A&E, for routine operations and to see their GP. The crisis is most acute in nursing, which is missing 40,000, and linked to a higher chance of dying on hospital wards. But the problem runs deeper as there are also 7,000 too few family GPs. Unless urgent action is taken it is feared that figures could jump to 250,000 by 2035.