The RCN has demanded ‘swift and decisive action’ from the NHS to end a culture of discrimination against temporary nursing staff. The RCN was responding to a report from the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) which claimed that the NHS’s failure to integrate temporary clinical staff—such as bank only staff, agency staff and locum doctors—can pose a risk to patient safety.
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‘Temporary nursing staff do an incredibly difficult job and without them services would struggle to function. They deserve support, not abuse or isolation,’ said Royal College of Nursing (RCN) chief nursing officer, Lynn Woolsey.
Temporary staff experience discrimination, including racial, from permanent staff, who also resent being paid less than temporary staff, the HSSIB added. Often, temporary staff do not receive proper inductions, and are denied access to electronic systems, preventing their giving full care: the report covers the death of ‘Mary’, aged 88, where one factor was that access restrictions meant the locum doctor in the emergency care unit was not able to request a CT scan.
HSSIB said national bodies could support patient safety by developing credentialling systems that enable staff to verify their competencies when moving between NHS organisations. It also recommended that the National Guardian’s Office, the body that encourages or supports NHS workers to speak up, should identify the barriers that prevent temporary staff from speaking up and develop mechanisms to address those barriers.
Ms Woolsey added: ‘The findings that temporary nursing staff, including those from ethnic minority backgrounds, are being discriminated against and prevented from raising concerns about patient safety are extremely serious.’
The RCN claimed better pay and conditions would encourage staff to take up permanent roles. ‘Government-funded degrees’ could boost recruitment too, Ms Woolsey said.
The HSSIB is a fully independent arm’s length body of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), set up in 2023 to investigate patient safety concerns across the NHS.