Staff exodus causes nursing crisis

One in seven London nurses left the NHS last year, it emerged today.

The statistics from the Royal College of Nursing show the extent of the nursing crisis facing the capital, and prompted a warning to the Government that it must double the number of nurses the NHS recruits in order to keep up with the exodus.

Nationally, more than nine per cent of nurses left the NHS to work in the private sector, retire or to have children, but the situation is more critical in the capital - and getting worse. Here, more than 13 per cent of London nurses left the NHS last year.

The RCN has also calculated that a quarter of the nursing workforce will retire within the next 10 years, the equivalent of more than 150,000 staff, and so even more effort needs to put into recruitment.

Josie Irwin, head of employment relations at the RCN, said the departures were worrying.

She said: "London is one of the areas which is of concern to us because of how many nurses are leaving. We are dependent on the numbers coming in increasing and the numbers going out decreasing.

"We need to double the number of nurses coming in just to stand still. We have got more nurses than ever before but we need to have more, especially if we are moving towards focusing more on health promotion and prevention of illness, which relies heavily on the work of nurses." She said London has a particular problem holding on to nurses, as students tend to come to train in the capital, but then move elsewhere to work because of the high living costs and poor working conditions.

London is also heavily reliant on foreign nurses who on average stay only two years before leaving.

There is also evidence that the number of nurses coming to work in Britain is levelling off at about 12,000 a year - not enough to plug recruitment gaps for much longer.

Beverly Malone, general secretary of the RCN, said that with nurses leaving in larger numbers than ever before, those who remain are having to work longer hours. More than three quarters of nurses regularly work more than their contracted hours. Ms Malone-said the political partiesneeded to wake up to the issue.

"This election comes one week after our congress, the largest annual gathering of nurses in the UK who provide the majority of healthcare," she said.

"There are at least 1,000 nurses in each constituency who all want parties to put the health service first.

"However, all parties must accept that all these improvements depend on the recruitment of qualified nursing staff.

"The current range of policy initiatives has seen staffing growth, yet it's predicted by 2014 we will need twice as many new entrants as we do now just to keep the workforce constant.

"Flexible working hours, access to childcare and guaranteed pension arrangements are also key."