PATIENTS are breaking bones and suffering from brain bleeds due to a lack of nurses preventing them falling from hospital beds, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has warned.

Many are “waiting hours” for pain relief while others are “deteriorating needlessly” due to a staffing shortage which is “understated” in official figures, said a new RCN report published today.

Its findings show how a shortage of tens of thousands nurses can have “serious implications for patient safety” and highlight how some hospital trusts are dealing with hundreds of patient safety incidents each month linked to having too few registered nurses on shift.

RCN general secretary and chief executive professor Nicola Ranger said: “It’s utterly shocking that sick patients should wait hours for pain relief or vital medication while some are falling, breaking bones and deteriorating needlessly.

“The truth is patient safety incidents aren’t isolated and trusts are recording hundreds each month due to registered nurse shortages.”

The report says that there were about 23,000 nursing vacancies in England, but these figures “understate the true shortfall” as they do not account for frozen or unfunded posts.

The authors warn that staffing is “unevenly distributed across England” and highlighted how growth in the number of doctors has not been matched by the number of nurses.

Since 2009, nurse numbers increased by 33 per cent, compared with 60 per cent for doctors, the report states.

It states that if nurse numbers had grown at the same rate as doctors, England would currently have more than 77,000 additional nurses.

Nurse numbers have “failed to keep up with overall hospital workload” as there would be 55,000 more nurses since 2009-10 should numbers have kept pace with hospital activity growth over the period, it says.

Ms Ranger said: “The numbers are clear: we would have tens of thousands more nurses working in our NHS if we’d had the necessary investment to keep up with demand.

“Instead, our numbers have been held down, in contrast to other staff. When you have too few registered nurses, you get longer hospital stays, worse outcomes and more pressure on an already burned-out and exhausted workforce.”

The Department of Health and Social Care has been approached for comment.