Sack bosses who cut jobs to save cash, say nurses

Managers who persistently ignore the regulations and run under-staffed services should face the sack, the Royal College of Nursing annual conference in Harrogate was told.

It comes as new figures show that more than 3,600 nursing posts have been cut in London in the last 18 months.

Staff want to see minimum standards to be set for the number of nurses needed to care for patients in each area of medicine and then enshrined in law.

Community psychiatric nurse Geoff Earl proposed the motion at the congress and has already had exploratory meetings with ministers in Scotland about the plan.

Research has shown that patient mortality is 26 per cent higher on wards with the lowest nurse to patient ratios.

Mr Earl told the Evening Standard: "We are calling on the Royal College of Nursing council to engage with the UK governments to put in legislative mechanisms for there to be guaranteed safe and appropriate staffing levels.

"These minimum standards should become law but a good service would have staffing levels above that. We are worried to see that because of deficits wards are being closed and recruitment frozen which means there are wards working with inappropriate staffing levels and that affects patient care.

"Some community psychiatric services are running very short-staffed and it means errors creep in and lapses of judgment. It is dangerous for the nurse and the patient."

Mr Earl said each area of nursing such as paediatrics, neonatal or psychiatric would need different nurse-to-patient ratios according to the type of condition being treated and the intensity of the care required. Guidelines are already in place saying that the very sickest babies in neonatal intensive care should have one-to-one care around the clock.

Mr Earl said the Healthcare Commission could check that standards are being adhered to during annual inspections and penalties enforced if not. The ultimate sanction could be to sack the chief executive and board.

Mr Earl said: "I don't see anything wrong with sacking the chief executive if they were allowing staffing levels to be cut, just to balance the books, because they are not doing their job properly."

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: "Patient safety is always a top priority for the NHS and we now have around an extra 89,000 nurses working in the NHS delivering high quality care for patients than we did in 1997."

However, new figures show how debts in hospitals and health trusts have prompted managers to reduce workforce numbers.

Wards have been shut, temporary staff laid off and new recruitment frozen to ensure the NHS balances its books.

London has seen the largest staff cutbacks out of the 22,000 nationally. The figures were included in an RCN entitled Our NHS Today And Tomorrow.