Almost every NHS hospital has dangerously few nurses on wards and staff shortages are worsening, analysis of official figures shows.
Healthcare assistants are filling in for qualified nurses in a trend that experts warned would put people at risk. Nurses have cautioned that patients are going unwashed because hospitals are short of staff.
Understaffing has worsened since the government capped pay for agency nurses, the figures suggest.
Analysis of official data by the Health Service Journal finds 96 per cent of 214 hospitals failed to meet their planned level of nurses on wards during the day in October, up from about 85 per cent two years ago.
Peter Griffiths, an NHS adviser from Southampton University, said the service faced difficulties “and it isn’t getting any better”. More than 100 hospitals had more assistants than planned, suggesting that less skilled staff were plugging nursing gaps. Research published in November found that patients were a fifth more likely to die in hospitals where nurses were replaced with less-qualified staff.
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A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: “Measures to curb excessive agency spend are saving money which can be better spent on care.”