The
head of an NHS hospital trust has resigned after saying agency nurses employed
there "kill more people than they save".
Barrie
Blower, chairman of Walsall Hospitals NHS Trust, told the daughter of a woman
who died at one of the hospitals that employing agency nurses was "an
awful bloody set-up, but we have to have them".
He
said he was trying to recruit permanent staff from India and the Philippines to
replace the agency workers.
Blower’s
comments were recorded without his knowledge and he has since apologies for
their "inappropriate and inaccurate" nature.
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An
internal investigation at the hospital has showed that there was no link
between clinical incidents and agency workers, who account only 2.6 in every
100 nurses.
