Sir - It appears that many nurses are leaving the NHS and signing on with agencies and getting higher pay.
This creates a shortage of nurses in our hospitals and the need to employ these same nurses as agency nurses at extortionate rates.
Of course a high proportion of these costs accrue as profits to the agencies. Thus the hospitals' budgets are bleeding into profits for the private sector.
Apart from the morality of this situation, where the private sector gains from the costs of nurse training by the NHS, how do we stop this happening?
It is a chicken and egg situation. If we ban hospitals taking on agency nurses patients could suffer when there is a genuine need for emergency cover.
I would suggest that the NHS sets up its own Nursing Agency and bans the private sector but I doubt this could ever happen with successive governments mishandling the NHS.
Its about time we took the NHS away from politicians and freed it from the interference and ineptitude that has ensued.
Terry James
Drakes Broughton
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