THE UK’S largest nurses’ union has said Colchester General Hospital bosses should not be policing staff for admitting they are over-stretched.

The Royal College of Nursing has spoken out after the chief executive at Colchester said staff should not admit to patients if they are under-resourced.

Nick Hulme’s suggestion for a “mandate” to staff to introduce the policy was understood to have sparked anger among nurses, who claim they had previously been told by him to be open and honest with patients.

Teresa Budrey, regional director for the Eastern Region at the Royal College of Nursing, said: “Nurses must be ever mindful of the impact short staffing can have on patients.

“However, they have a duty of candour to their patients and should feel confident and supported by their managers to highlight staffing problems within workplaces every shift they work short.

“Nurses go out of their way to shield patients and relatives from the scale of the problem but senior managers should spend more time addressing the problem of short staffing and less on policing hard working staff.

“This is not a local problem and certainly not of the NHS’s own making. “When we are 40,000 nurses short in the NHS in England alone, questions need to be asked of ministers.

“The Government must launch a comprehensive national campaign to get young people into nursing and match it with real investment in the NHS.”

Mr Hulme’s comments were made to directors at a public board meeting last week.

He had said: “No member of staff should ever tell a patient we are short-staffed.

“That’s the message we are giving patients in terms of confidence, I am absolutely clear about that.

“I would be looking for the board to have support to have an absolute mandate to say staff should never discuss staff levels with patients.”

A hospital spokesman said: “We make sure all our clinical areas are staffed to a safe level and patients can be assured of that by seeing boards outside each ward which gives the staff numbers for each team.”