NHS Wales health boards currently have 2,000 registered nurse vacancies, a report by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Wales outlines.
In the 2024 edition of Nursing in Numbers, the RCN said the vacancies increase NHS Wales’s reliance on temporary agency staff, which cost taxpayers £142m in 2023-24.
The report also shows that, every week, nurses give 73,651 additional hours on top of their contracts, the equivalent of employing an additional 1,964 full-time nurses.
Helen Whyley, RCN Wales Executive Director, said: “Our findings sound a clear warning; they also show the way forward.
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“If the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care wants to make a difference to patients, these are the issues he must focus on.
“There is a strong link between shortages of registered nurses and increased patient mortality, with some research putting the increase as high as 41 per cent.
“As nursing staff work in every corner of the health and social care system, these shortages touch everyone.
“Year after year, RCN Wales has raised the alarm and today we see the consequences: unsafe corridor care in our accident and emergency departments, and patients treated in storage areas or admitted to wards that are over capacity.”