Sick as a parrot? or a Nurse?

[moan whinge whine]

Just had a brain-ache of a time working with another qualified nurse on generating the Duty Rota for the ward over the coming weeks. The problem is, we've lost two qualified nurse to Maternity Leave and three unqualified nurses to training and alternate careers... That's near 25% of our total workforce!!

Yes, there is a bank pool of staff we can tap into but there're never any guarantees that folk'll choose to work on our ward and we no longer have access to nursing agency staff due to the high costs associated with these nurses.

Further to this, due to high levels of sickness amongst staff, there is a freeze on recruitment into unqualified nursing posts whilst we cover the costs of temporary staffing. It's a bit of a vicious circle... We have staff off sick and have to cover with temporary staff but can't employ new staff because the money is being used to pay the temporary staff... meanwhile, we have to try and make the ill staff see reason and magically become well again!!

Our staff with sickness have legitimate reasoning... In fact, two weeks ago one nearly bled to death on the operating table... I think it's reasonable to allow her some time to recuperate?

OK, the staffing levels aren't critical but they're not comfortable either. I'd like to be able to sleep at night knowing I've not left any staff in an awkward position but at the moment, this just isn't true. I'm not seeing it be so for some time to come!

[/moan whinge whine]