Cost for Hiring A&E Locums is costing £80million a Year

Cost for Hiring A&E Locums is costing £80million a YearSubmitted by Pallavi Sharma on Tue, 01/14/2014 - 08:18 

New figures have shown that A&E departments have been suffering shortages of staff to such an extent that they have to spend more than £80million a year to hire locum doctors. Temporary medics are being paid £750,000 annually by the average causality unit to fulfill the requirement of doctors during rota gaps. Some of them are paying more than £4million, showed the figures.
A&E is facing a recruitment crisis because most junior are not willing to serve the purpose bas they feel immense pressure of intense work, antisocial hours and low payment. What is making the situation even worse is the fact that growing numbers of trained casualty doctors are leaving jobs to work abroad where standard of care is much better and salaries are also higher.

As a result, hospitals have no other choice than to rely on expensive locums who are not well capable to serve the purpose because of being less competent, more inexperienced and highly likely to make mistakes because of not being used to handle equipment.
Dr. Cliff Mann is president of the College of Emergency Medicine, and he also represents A&E doctors. He said, "It's about the experience and training of locums compared to permanent staff, and the cost".