THE one certainty is that jobs have been lost. But in the publicity fog surrounding the NHS, it is unclear how many.

Take the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust. Health Service Journal (Oct 19) quotes its chief executive: “We thought we would have to place just over 200 staff at risk of redundancy.” In fact, just ten have taken voluntary redundancy and only four have been made redundant. But 200 is more likely to make headlines than four.

Another trust, in Worcestershire, identified more than 750 jobs at risk. In fact, says a trust spokesperson, only 11 have actually been lost.

But pessimists can be forgiven for having expected worse. NHS Employers estimated that 20,000 posts were threatened. HSJ says that the reality is just 766 redundancies so far.

The important distinction is, it seems, between jobs lost and posts unfilled. Kevin Barron, the chair of the Commons Health Select Committee, says that he is “hoarse” from talking to organisations such as the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) which he says tell the media that thousands of jobs are being lost. “In my view, posts unfilled are not jobs lost,” Barron says.

But that’s little comfort to those who have been made redundant or who have completed their healthcare training and then found that they cannot get work.

Commenting on a survey which found that barely half of student nurses expect to have jobs on qualifying, Susan Watts, the RCN’s student adviser, says that new staff should be guaranteed a one-year contract. Failure to do so risks nursing shortages in a few years’ time, she predicts.

Therapy Weekly (Oct 19) suggests that newly qualified physiotherapists are in a similar position. It says that a “staggering” 93 per cent of this year’s graduates have still not found an NHS post.

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