{"id":610391,"date":"2026-05-29T13:44:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T13:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/610391\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T13:44:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T13:44:20","slug":"nursing-cost-of-temporary-nursing-staff-in-ni-triples-in-six-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/610391\/","title":{"rendered":"Nursing: Cost of temporary nursing staff in NI triples in six years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Director of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in Northern Ireland, Rita Devlin, said the rising spend on temporary staff is &#8220;neither sustainable nor acceptable for patients or staff&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She pointed to the fact some of Northern Ireland&#8217;s health trusts are &#8220;hugely replying&#8221; on temporary staff, but admitted &#8220;you can&#8217;t just turn the tap off because that would impact patient safety&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Devlin told BBC Radio Ulster&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sounds\/brand\/b007cps5\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Good Morning Ulster programme<\/a> that the level of spending represents a &#8220;missed opportunity&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The report makes clear that the same funding could employ more than 2,600 full-time nurses,&#8221; she said.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;At a time when services are under extreme pressure, this is money that should be invested in building a stable, permanent workforce, not plugging gaps at a far higher cost.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Devlin added that an over-reliance on agency staff is a &#8220;symptom of deeper, long standing issues&#8221; and will not be resolved &#8220;unless we address the failure to properly plan, recruit and retain nurses&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A solution she said would be: &#8220;increasing training places, improving retention through better pay and working conditions, and making nursing an attractive long-term career&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Director of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in Northern Ireland, Rita Devlin, said the rising spend on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-610391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}