Evidence Submission (Personal Narrative): Cuts to outpatient frontline services

I am a nurse who works in an outpatients department and we have experienced recent cuts to our frontline services.

We are a small team of five nurses with responsibility for delivering a range of care to patients.

There is currently a vacant Band 7 post due to a nurse being off sick for 6 months. Initially, the post was covered by a Band 5 agency nurse.

About 3 months ago, immediately following significant saving cuts being announced in our trust, the agency nurse was cut leaving the department short of a senior nurse.

Our Band 6 nurse is now acting as a Band 7, with no additional training or remuneration, which negatively impacts on the capacity of more junior members of staff.

In addition to this, the trust want to add a new service to our clinic, delivered to all patients as standard. However, not all staff are trained to do this and there are no additional time or resources made available. Staff with the existing skills needed are being put under pressure to deliver the service, but have no additional time to do this.

As a result, our team is over-stretched and demoralised. Patient care has been affected too as we frequently have to run with a reduced clinic size due to lack of staff. This will no doubt cause longer waiting times.

Author: Anonymous