Posted 11 January 2023 - 10:00
Posted 11 January 2023 - 10:00
News
Sturgeon: it will be ‘very hard’ to avert nurse strikes in Scotland
First minister says ‘we have no more money’ to increase the country's pay offer for nurses, as RCN prepares to announce strike dates
First minister says ‘we have no more money’ to increase the country's pay offer for nurses, as RCN prepares to announce strike dates
Preventing nurse strikes in Scotland’s NHS will be ‘very hard’ as there is no more money for a better pay offer, first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said.
Speaking at a press conference on pressures facing the health service, Ms Sturgeon added that she would do everything she could to avert industrial action, but resources were ‘finite’.
‘We have no more money this year and we’ve said that all along,’ she said. ‘Our health service and social care staff deserve the highest possible increase we can give them and that’s what we are seeking to do.
‘We remain actively engaged with unions, and that will continue. I consider it – and I’m not being in any way complacent about this – I think this [averting strikes] will be a very, very hard thing to achieve.’
Nurse strikes imminent as pay deal rejected by RCN
Scotland is the only country in the UK so far to have averted strike action from nurses, but its RCN members overwhelmingly rejected the Scottish Government’s latest pay offer of around 8%. RCN Scotland is expected to announce strike dates this month.
The revised pay offer was accepted by nurses represented by Unison.
Mounting pressures on the NHS
The threat of strike action comes as Scotland’s hospitals face unprecedented pressures with bed occupancy exceeding 95%, higher than the 87% seen before the COVID-19 pandemic. Ms Sturgeon said delayed discharges and the ‘sheer scale of demand’ were among the factors to blame.
There were 6,319 nursing and midwifery vacancies in the NHS in Scotland at the end of September, latest figures show. This figure is up from 6,010 at the end of June.
Scottish health secretary Humza Yousaf announced an extra £8 million for around 300 beds in care homes that hospital patients can be discharged to. This funding comes amid what he called the 'single most challenging winter that the NHS in Scotland has ever faced’.
‘We simply don’t have the workforce we need’
RCN Scotland said the vacancy rate for district nursing had reached 16%, meaning there were not enough nurses to cover the extra beds. The college emphasised that its previous warnings about nursing vacancies and retention ‘had not been listened to’.
The college’s director Colin Poolman said: ‘Patients are being put at risk and the impact of working under this level of pressure every day cannot be overstated.
‘Scotland’s nursing workforce crisis is at the heart of these challenges. We simply don’t have the workforce we need and it is patients and families who are suffering.’
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