Reversing Nurse Staffing Shortages

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The NHS is facing a staffing crisis. Current numbers show that there are 43,619 nurse vacancies in the NHS. With trusts in England spending £1.46 billion a year on agency and bank nurse shifts to fill gaps in permanent nursing staff. Some figures showing that trusts are spending greater than £2500 for one agency staff on shift (Waters, 2022). As a nurse in Canada and the UK, I have experienced first-hand the impacts of staffing shortages on staff mental health and patient safety. While hiring of agency staff can help plug the holes in a rota, the overreliance on agency staff can have impacts on staff morale, and the mental health of agency and staff nurses (Manias, 2003). For example, Agency staff are often not trained on the equipment and experience "a lack of confidence" when working in new wards and are often viewed as outsiders by permanent nursing staff (Hass, 2006). And from a logistics perspective, many agency nurses were not notified of shifts in an appropriate and timely fashion (Manias, 2003). For my PhD thesis I will be asking if a reverse auction and nurse recommender system can be used to address the high costs of agency nursing, while improving patient safety and agency nurse satisfaction.