‘I am struggling a bit to see where the crisis is.’
John Humphrys in his own interview on the BBC’s nursing shortage ‘crisis’ in the NHS
The BBC has been headlining with the news that there is a shortage of nurses in the NHS and foreign nurses are having to be recruited, at great expense, by the shipload.
Trouble is, much like its claim that Jeremy Hunt was misleading us on the figures for deaths at the weekends, this is a story generated, it seems, only in the minds of the BBC itself for its own reasons and purposes.
Here is their web report….a report which misses out the absolutely crucial information that we only found out on the Today programme….trouble is, it seems the BBC only found out at the same time, found out that their story is complete bunk….hence John Humphrys’ reaction….’I’m struggling a bit to see where the crisis is?’ Yeah…that’s because there isn’t one. Clearly either the BBC reporters did not research the story properly or they didn’t care that it was wrong and went ahead anyway in the hope that it was a ‘scoop’.
The whole piece began at 08:13:32 where we heard that patients were getting the care they needed with the help of agency staff, but John Humphrys interviewed Ian Cummings (08:19), chief executive of Health Education England who gave the lie to the BBC narrative.
The reason there is a ‘shortage’ of nurses? Not because there is a lack of recruits, not because nurses are fleeing the profession but because……because the government is looking to recruit far more nurses, 24,000 more, in response to Mid-Staffs and other quality failings that have been found. The ‘shortage’ is man-made if you like…in fact it is a ‘shortage’ in part generated by the BBC which has campaigned relentlessly for more nurses.
Are we recruiting more overseas nurses now as a response? No…in fact we had more foreign nurses here in 2004/05 than we do now…and the level of overseas recruitment has been dropping. Is there a shortage of applicants to be nurses? No…there are 20,000 training places and 60,000 applicants. Will patients suffer (as John Humphrys asked numerous times)..No.
It was at this time (08:22) Humphrys gave up and said he was struggling to see where the crisis was. That’s because there isn’t one. The NHS is coping until the new recruits filter through…the timescale is that it takes 3 to 4 years to recruit and train a nurse…hence by 2019-2020 the NHS should have all the homegrown staff it needs…and until then it will employ agency and overseas staff.
This is a non-story about a crisis that isn’t a crisis…a shortage of nurses that is only a shortage because the government is looking to recruit 24,000 more nurses in order to improve the quality of service.
The BBC should be applauding, instead it fabricates an entirely ficticious, negative tale about a crisis. Why?