Unfilled NHS jobs in West Midlands hits highest number on record

The number of unfilled NHS jobs in the West Midlands has hit its joint highest figure on record.

New data shows that the equivalent of 113,763 people were working full-time in the NHS in the region in March.

During the same month there were 2,745 adverts for full-time jobs – meaning that one in 42 NHS jobs in the West Midlands was empty.

The NHS has published monthly data on vacancies and its current staff going back to February 2015 and this figure is the joint highest on record for the West Midlands.

During this time it has fluctuated between 1.8 per cent (one in 56) and 2.4 per cent (one in 42).

If anything, the real vacancy rate could be higher as the NHS sometimes advertises multiple jobs in the same advert.

The news comes just weeks after it was revealed that Coventry’s University Hospital was among several hospital trusts across the UK with more than 1,000 staff vacancies.

At the time, a spokesman for University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust said: “We have a robust recruitment strategy in place which has led to a reduction in nurse vacancies in recent months and 90 new nurses confirmed to join the Trust between now and September.

“Providing high quality care is always our priority and in addition to our permanent clinicians, we also have access to a bank of trained staff that we utilise flexibly as required to address any temporary shortages in staffing.”

The monthly NHS data includes both frontline doctors and nurses and support staff.

Community health services were the most common area to be advertised in the West Midlands, followed by admin jobs and then general medicine.

In March, the NHS employed more than one million people in England – two per cent more than the year before.

Slightly more than half of them were doctors, nurses, paramedics and other medically-trained staff. The rest were backroom staff and managers.

The NHS in the West Midlands has also grown, employing the equivalent of 1,344 more people full-time in March 2017 than it did in March 2016.

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