Agency nurses will play a vital role should a pandemic of deadly bird flu break out in the UK.

Debbie Mellor, branch head of workforce capacity at the Department of Health, says temporary nurses would boost hospital capacity in areas affected by the H5N1 bird flu virus.

Temporary nurses could also be drafted in to help deal with terrorist attacks and other disasters.

Speaking at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s nursing and social care conference this month, Mellor said the NHS had factored agency nurses in to its emergency plans.

“The NHS must deal with all sorts of emergencies, and bird flu is just one that we may need to respond to,” she said.

“In the event of outbreaks in different parts of the country, we will need to increase the capacity of a lot of services.

“That will mean trying to flex the temporary workforce as well as the permanent workforce.”

But Karen Harford, nurse manager at ANA Nursing and Care Services in Stoke, said the NHS must ensure vaccines are available for temp nurses.

“Vaccinating nurses will give the NHS a better chance of filling vacancies,” she said.

Mellor also warns that life will get harder for nurse agencies as the NHS reduces its agency spend. Better fill rates for permanent jobs have reduced demand for agency nurses, she says.

“We are hearing the first stories about nurses being unemployed and not getting jobs,” she said.

“In terms of international recruitment, the trend is also down. We expect the number of UK-trained people to continue going up as increased investment in training begins to come out.”