WYE Valley NHS Trust (WVT) has cut back on its use of bank and agency staff but still faces significant challenges in recruiting.

Today, health secretary Jeremy Hunt said the NHS has to slash its “soaring” overall spend on agency staff.

WVT has long acknowledged a need to ease a reliance on bank and agency staff – particularly nurses – and the cost they come at.

The Hereford Times has seen figures for April that show an overall decrease in bank and agency staff across the trust that represented the equivalent of 68 whole time roles.

Figures for March show temporary staff made up 6.5 per cent of the trust’s workforce, down from 8.8 per cent the previous month.

There are currently 256 full time equivalent  posts going through the trust’s recruitment process – around 10 per cent of the workforce.

The Trust specifically acknowledges “significant” challenges recruiting to hospital posts on the medical and surgical wards, and in stroke and ITU.

Trust staff have travelled as far as the Philippines to interview and recruit around 80 nurses expected to start arriving around September.

At least five of these recruits are already headed for the acute admissions unit (AAU) which currently has 14 whole time equivalent posts vacant in addition to managing sickness and maternity leave.

These vacancies are being covered by block booking bank and agency nurses.

AAU is effectively the “front door” for  the majority of patients needing emergency treatment from walk-in to high dependency.

One indicator of the effect of the staffing shortage is a recorded  increase in drug errors and patient slips, trips or falls over the past six months.

Over the past three months, the ward has experienced a particularly high volume of dependant, frail elderly patients – a result of the hospital’s new frailty assessment unit.

Three newly qualified nurses and another recruited from the European Union are also expected on the ward in September.

At the other end of the scale,  the trust is experiencing recruitment issues to consultants posts in emergency medicine, stroke, geriatric medicine and diabetes, senior house officer posts in trauma, orthopaedics and general medicine  and graded posts in medicine, geriatrics and paediatrics.

There continues to be a high use of agency locums to cover these vacancies.

April saw a decrease of 11 in the trust’s substantive workforce as overall turnover rose to 12.2 per cent having experienced a drop since September.

 The trust has launched as exercise to analyse related trends and themes.

Sickness absence decreased over April to 3.94 per cent - down from 4.56 per cent the previous month - with all service units above the trust’s target.

Long-term sickness decreased to 62 staff from 64 the previous month.

Stress and anxiety conditions were the main reasons for sickness absence over April, with a total of 335 staff absent over the month – down from 416 the previous month.