The Trust’s Board of Directors has announced that the hospital will invest £400k to increase the number of nurses on duty on wards over night.
The investment was announced by Director of Nursing Dawn Wardell at a meeting of the Board of Directors and is intended to improve the skill mix and increase the ratio of nurses to beds at night.
The investment will lead to 10 new whole time equivalent nurses being recruited to the Trust’s larger wards*.
This investment comes on the back of significant investment in frontline staffing in recent years, including:
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£1.3m in 2011 to recruit 42 new nurses for across the hospital.
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£330k in 2012/13 to recruit 11 new whole time equivalent nurses to A&E
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£200k in 2012/13 to recruit seven new whole time equivalent midwives
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£1.4m in 2013 to recruit 20 nurses, 14 health care support workers, 6 new acute consultant physicians and a nurse consultant to run the new Acute Medical Unit.
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£1m in 2013 to recruit 11 new paediatric consultants to help run the new Rosie Goodwin Children’s Assessment Unit.
Dawn said: “This latest investment shows that the Trust is fully committed to continuing to improve the quality of care and safety we provide to our patients. One of the best ways of delivering efficiency savings is to invest in high quality staff who can help to ensure our patients are receiving the right care in the right place at the right time and this is something we will continue to do.”
The new nursing positions will be advertised on www.jobs.nhs.uk in the next couple of weeks.
