A Scottish health board is battling an oil and gas related recruitment crisis – with hundreds of nursing jobs unfilled.
The revelation comes after a report which revealed that overall, recruitment had been boosted within the NHS since the oil price downturn.
More than 180 new nurses and midwives have hit the wards across the NHS Grampian region over the last year.
Health chiefs were told yesterday that there are still around around 400 vacant nursing and midwifery posts to be filled.
NHS Grampian has struggled to recruit and retain staff for many years due to the lucrative salaries that can be had in the region’s once booming oil and gas industry.
Brent Crude’s economic bubble, which burst two years ago, has also made the cost of living in the Granite City notoriously expensive for property- another factor blamed for the lack of nurses and doctors willing to work in the area.
And despite the dramatic fall in the price of oil since 2014, which has led to tens of thousands of job losses worldwide, general outlays in the energy capital of Europe remain high.
Dr Annie Ingram, Director of Workforce at NHS Grampian, said the organisation had made significant strides forward in its recent effort to attract new recruits., she said that the struggle to fill the vacant posts would need to be urgently addressed – whether with staff from the UK or further afield.
At a meeting of the health board, Dr Ingram said: “We’ve made huge progress over the last year but, like other public sector organisations in Grampian, we face challenges in recruiting. That is particularly the case for nursing and some medical roles.
“Despite recruiting an extra 186 nurses over the last year – and that’s on top of replacing those who have retired or left the organisation – we still have too many vacancies.
“At the moment, for example, there are around 400 vacant nursing and midwifery posts and it is crucial we continue to innovate and try things outside of the traditional recruitment methods in order to fill those with skilled professionals.”
NHS Grampian board members were asked at yesterday’s meeting to approve a new workforce action plan to continue the current recruitment drive.
Dr Ingram said that a ‘return to work’ scheme run in conjunction with Robert Gordon University (RGU), to help former nurses who have left the profession rejoin the workforce, had been particularly successful.
But she stressed that a long term solution was needed to address the chronic shortage of staff.
Dr Ingram said: “We’ve put a huge amount of effort into attracting former nurses back into the profession over the last year, the Return to Practice scheme we are running with RGU being just one example.
“That’s been really successful with each of the three courses so far fully subscribed and the action plan commits us to continuing that work for the foreseeable future.
“Long term however, we also need to ensure that we are able to attract experienced medical professionals from further afield – whether that is from elsewhere in the UK or from abroad.
“That’s certainly a challenge for NHS Grampian, as it is for all public sector organisations in our area – largely because of the high cost of housing in the north east.”
One proposed solution is ‘key worker accommodation’ – a low cost housing scheme for public sector staff.
NHS Grampian officials have proposed building 110 houses in the city under the scheme.
The properties would also cater to professions such as teaching which have also suffered from staff shortages due to the black gold rush that has kept the city’s economy buoyant since the 1980s North Sea oil boom.proposal to build the key worker accommodation is at an advanced stage with a formal planning application due to go before Aberdeen City Council shortly.