Greater use of flexible and locum doctors is vital for dealing with the pressures on frontline staffing brought about by new EU rules, according to medical recruiter HCL Thames Medics.

Responding to research by the Royal College of Physicians, which said that some hospital doctors now have to care for up to 400 patients at night due to the impact of the European Working Time Directive, which cut junior doctors’ working hours to 48 per week, the recruiter says this has had a dramatic impact on staffing levels in hospital wards.

The solution, suggests HCL Thames Medics, is to increase the proportion of locum doctors in frontline NHS staff, thus creating a flexible workforce which could be staffed up and down quickly to meet fluctuating demand.

Kirsten Simcoe, managing director of HCL Thames Medics, says: “With tougher times ahead for the public sector, the challenge is maintaining doctors’ staffing levels in a cost-efficient manner.

“More and more of our NHS clients are increasing the use of locum doctors, as this is a flexible and cost-effective alternative to a frontline made up entirely of doctors permanently employed by the public sector.”