NHS crisis is 'complete nightmare' with enough vacancies to fill 66 hospitals

The NHS staffing crisis means one in three senior doctor positions are unfilled in parts of the country, a report warns.

Data released under Freedom of Information laws found 33,000 consultant jobs were listed on the NHS Jobs website between 2022 and 2025 in England and Wales - enough to staff more than 66 large hospitals. The report in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) found the NHS spent £674million on expensive agency doctors in 2024/25 as managers regularly take 12 months to fill a vacancy.

One resident doctor at a north London trust said: “It’s a complete nightmare – the doctors who are left working have to work at 150%, patients have to wait longer to be seen, and by the end of the shift doctors are running on fumes.”

Dr Shanu Datta, co-chair of the British Medical Association’s consultants committee, said: “Simply put - we do not have enough consultants to meet the needs of patients or run services to the standard they should be.”

The first-ever NHS long term workforce modelling concluded in 2023 that the service in England was short of 150,000 permanent staff needed to properly function. It followed a decade-long funding squeeze under the Tories. Last year a Cambridge University study found NHS short staffing is causing at least 4,000 extra deaths a year.

It comes as separate analysis found there is a 15% shortfall of anaesthetists - doctors who give anaesthetics to patients before procedures.

The Royal College of Anaesthetists surveyed 143 clinical leaders from across the UK and reported that 8% said these shortages caused treatment delays on a daily basis. Some 36% reported lack of anaesthetics was causing hospital delays every week.

The BMJ report also surveyed 116 recruiting managers about the challenges they face when recruiting consultants. Half said their need to recruit consultants will increase in the coming year but only 5% expect their budget to increase, while 61% said consultant vacancies were having a significant negative impact on waiting times and 54% on quality of care. Some 27% said they regularly or always have to source candidates from overseas to fill difficult consultant vacancies.

The long term solution to the recruitment crisis is to restructure specialist training to create more homegrown consultants in shortage areas and remove bottlenecks, the report concluded.

Phil Johnson, director at BMJ Careers, which conducted the report, said: “The word ‘crisis’ can be overused, but at a time when activity is increasing, the new Labour government is pledging to eliminate agency spending and slash international recruitment at the same time, it is time to acknowledge a tipping point has been reached.”

An NHS England spokesperson told BMJ Careers: “While agency spend is at a record low with trusts on track to save £1 billion over two years, we want to go further still. We are working with the government on a 10 Year Health Workforce Plan which will detail the numbers of staff we need now and in the future.”

A Scottish government spokesperson said: “We work directly with health boards to reduce the use of medical agency staff, encouraging alternative staffing options, as well as ensuring any locum use represents best value.”

A spokesperson for the Welsh Government said: “The NHS in Wales now has more doctors than at any point in its history. Spend on agency and locum medical and dental staff fell by approximately £16 million between 2023-24 and 2024-25, and we anticipate further reduction this year.”