THE majority of hospital shifts are understaffed, putting patients’ lives and safety in danger and driving yet more demoralised nurses out of the NHS, their union warned yesterday.

The government’s continuing destruction of the NHS last year forced another 25,000 trained nurses to quit their jobs, adding to existing shortages, the Royal College of Nurses (RCN) is due to be told at its annual conference in Glasgow.

Understaffing levels are the worst since the NHS was founded 74 years ago, RCN general secretary Pat Cullen warns.

The worsening crisis in nurse staffing levels is exposed in an RCN survey of 20,000 front-line staff which reveals the number of shifts with safe staffing levels had fallen from 45 per cent five years ago and 42 per cent in 2020 to 25 per cent last year.

Ms Cullen says the “new report lays bare the state of health and care services across the UK.

“It shows the shortages that force you to go even more than the extra mile and that, when the shortages are greatest, you are forced to leave patient care undone.

“Don’t ever think that it is normal to not have enough staff to meet the needs of patients. It is not.”

The union’s members are due to send a message to let the “full truth be known — nursing is saying loud and clear: enough is enough.”

According to Ms Cullen: “If there was ever a time to break this cycle – it is now.

“It is your professional duty to be concerned about unsafe staffing and we have your back.

“To those from government listening to my words – we have had enough.”