HEALTH bosses want to highlight to nurses that flexible working is now an option as vacancy rates continue to rise.

Problems with recruiting medical staff is not unique to Herefordshire as there is a national shortage, but the Wye Valley NHS Trust board meeting heard vacancies had risen again.

In December there was a vacancy rate of 8.9 percent, when five percent is expected. Sickness absence was 4.8 percent for the same month, when 3.5 percent is expected.

Despite this, agency spend had reduced for the same month from 11.1 percent to 10.5 percent of the overall pay bill. This works out at £1,150,000.

A member of the public asked what the trust was doing to try and encourage more nurses to join the trust.

Jane Ives, managing director, said: "I think it is clear we haven't done enough on flexible working for nurses."

Director of human resources and organisational development, Sue Smith, said the trust has just brought back a flexible working policy. She said: "It's time we don't hold out for that perfect fulltime appointment as we have a national shortage of nurses. Let's make the best of all nurses in our community."

Ms Ives said the trust would also like to make a £1m investment in their consultant teams, which all have at least one vacancy.

She said: "The first thing to really start to recognise is the sort of pressure, particularly our consultant teams, are under. They are at the frontline of making clinical decisions."

She added: "Our teams are too small for the workload we are expecting them to do."

Ms Ives said, for example, with regards to the cardiology department there is a team of three, while there is funding for four. She said they cannot recruit the fourth but she said this could be because potential employers think the department looks like a hard place to work.

Ms Ives added: "If we made that a team of five or six we may be able to recruit."

There is going to be a business case produced for consultants by the end of February.