Extra cash for hospital staffing

Lincolnshire hospitals have committed to investing an extra £2.6m into the nursing and midwifery workforce.
The money will come in over the course of a year, to ensure wards remain safely staffed and to further improve the quality of patient care.
United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust recently undertook an ‘establishment review’ looking at nurse and midwifery staffing across all of its hospitals.
The review looked at how many registered nurses, midwives and healthcare support workers are on each ward.
The trust has decided to invest the additional money in increasing staff numbers on most wards to help reduce the costs of agency personnel.
The investment will pay for an extra 25 (whole time equivalent) registered nurses and midwives and 57 health care support workers.
“We carried out our establishment review so that we could be assured that the staffing levels across our wards continue to be appropriate and sufficient,” said Dr Karen Dunderdale, director of nursing at ULHT.