In early June, 2015, it became apparent that the UK National Health Service (NHS) had spent £3·3 billion on temporary nurses’ agency fees in the past financial year. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt ascribed this increased use of agency nurses partly to hospitals’ response to the report into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust that investigated unacceptably poor levels of care in that region’s health-care provision, and showed that this was partly related to chronically low staffing levels. Declining numbers of nurses is a global problem, and all the more so given mounting evidence showing that involving nurses in more specialist roles, such as in nurse-led clinics for patients with cancer, improves patient outcomes.  Read More