Chief nurse's first job is to cure staff shortages
A REVIEW of Guernsey's nursing and midwifery workforce will be carried out by the new chief nurse as the island looks to adapt to a worldwide shortage of nurses.
Nine out of 10 hospitals in England face a shortage of nurses, according to official figures, with staff warning that services could be 'tipped over the edge'.
The monthly reports filed by NHS hospitals show that 207 of 225 hospitals have been unable to find enough nurses to staff their wards. In some hospitals, one nurse had to look after 22 patients.
Health and Social Services chief officer, Dr Carol Tozer, said the review would be one of the first objectives of the recently appointed chief nurse, Professor Juliet Beal.
'At the Princess Elizabeth Hospital we don't have a junior doctor model and so Juliet will be looking at whether actually we should be re-profiling our workforce.
'We know internationally there is a shortage of band 5 nurses and because we don't have that junior doctor model, maybe what we should be saying is that we need a lot more band 6 and 7 nurses, maybe fewer band 5, more band 4s and how we can plan around that.'
Reports published by the Nursing and Midwifery Council as a follow-up to its review of services showed improvements had been made in how the hospital deals with student nurses.
Those students who had their training suspended following the NMC's damning extraordinary review into services last year have now all returned to their training.
Dr Tozer said, with the support of the board, the department was also considering increasing the intake of student nurses from roughly 15 every year to 30.
