Hundreds of Lothian nursing jobs to face axe in NHS cost-cutting

The Evening News has learned that of the 700 jobs to go this year, nearly half of those will be nurses. It has prompted criticism from politicians and patient groups, who say NHS Lothian was trying to disguise the fact nursing posts would be lost.

There are also fears that more nursing positions will go in next year's round of cuts, which will see a further 1,300 staff go from the health board, taking employee numbers down to around 27,000.

NHS Lothian insisted that increased productivity and efficiency would make up for job cuts, while these figures are merely an early "projection".

But Labour's health spokeswoman, Jackie Baillie, said: "You cannot get rid of that number of staff and have no impact on front line services.

"When you consider that of that 700 almost half are nurses then quite clearly there are concerns for patient safety."

Details of the job cuts are contained in the 2010/11 Workforce Planning Summary, which has been shown to the Scottish Government but has not yet been made public.

It shows that 333 of the 700 losses would come from nursing staff, despite the health board maintaining only last week its desire to "protect front line services and to deliver higher standards of care".

Margaret Watt, chairwoman of the Scotland Patients Association, said: "This is a clear contradiction. Every nurse is on the front line when we need them, and we can't afford to lose any more. We've said for years that we need more nurses, not less – they don't appear to be listening."

There is a shortfall of around 60 million in the NHS Lothian budget, a black hole which has brought tensions between Holyrood and senior health chiefs, who feel the NHS in Glasgow receives a disproportionately larger amount of money. The funding difficulties have also cast a shadow over the future of major development projects, such as moving a brain unit to Little France beside the new Sick Kids Hospital and the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

Norman Provan, RCN Scotland's associate director in Edinburgh, said: "Ultimately, there are going to be 333 fewer nurses next year than this year, and that is something of concern.

"But in fairness to the health board, they have been open with us about the process.

"There are nurses that are not involved in day to day front line duty and NHS Lothian has said that service redesign could be a way of doing this."

Susan Goldsmith, NHS Lothian's director of finance, said: "We intend to increase productivity through staff training, working to reduce short term sickness absence rates, better use of IT and service redesign.

"These measures, along with natural staff turnover, will result in our planned reduction. The figures in our plan are initial projections which were worked out by looking at the proportion of each job type which make up our workforce. They are in no way indicative of any planned staffing reductions."