RCN report

The NHS is sleepwalking into a crisis according to the RCN nurses’ union.

Despite government promises to protect the frontline, the RCN’s Frontline first campaign has identified more than 61,000 posts across the NHS in England that are now at risk or have been axed.

NHS Information Centre figures also reveal that the NHS workforce has fallen by almost 21,000 since the coalition came to power.

This includes a loss of more than 6,000 qualified nursing posts.

RCN chief executive and general secretary Dr Peter Carter said: “For the past two and a half years, the government’s consistent rhetoric has been that frontline posts and services are being protected. Sadly, that is simply not the case.”

And he said that nursing is not being protected in the same way as some other clinical professions, with posts and training places often cut for purely financial reasons.