According to the APSCo, the nurse strikes are a symptom of a wider issue in the healthcare sector that won’t be solved by pay rises alone.
Tania Bowers, Global Public Policy Director at the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo), explained further, “The unrest in the healthcare sector was a concern before the pandemic.
“With the last few years putting increasing pressure on staff across health and social care, a strike was inevitable if no changes were made to both support those already working in the sector and boost recruitment.
“While pay rises are the greatest issue for those on the picket line, there is also a lot more that’s needed to manage the NHS workforce, streamline hiring and compliance, increase speed, efficiency and transparency of agency worker use, improve permanent recruitment levels and retention.
“At the moment, the scale of skills demand combined with the overly complex and inflexible varied framework requirements are creating a Catch 22 scenario where desperate Trusts are taking a ‘money no issue’ approach to sourcing agency workers to fill just a fraction of the resourcing requirements they have.
“Our healthcare recruitment members are also increasingly seeing Trusts go off-framework to find staff, which is again driving up costs.”