NHS bosses have today come under fire after it emerged a hospital paid a temporary nurse £2,200 to cover a single 12-hour shift. The figure, which equates to £183 an hour, was paid by the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. It represents double the rate for a neurologist and was revealed following a Freedom of Information request. It also emerged there were 47 agency nurses working at the trust in December last year. The trust, which runs the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford, has been criticised for wasting taxpayers' money. The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust paid £2,200 to a temporary nurse for one 12-hour shift to help amid a shortage of trained nurses, a Freedom of Information request revealed (file picture) Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'Taxpayers will be aghast at the cost of just one shift. 'Agency nurses are far more expensive than their regular counterparts and we have to minimise the number used. 'You can't open a newspaper without hearing how tight finances are in the NHS, but the service has to become far more efficient with the money it already has.' Edmund Stubbs, from independent think tank Civitas, added: 'It is evident that a lack of staff is leading to excessive spending on agency staff, locums and overseas recruitment.' A spokesman for the trust said the £2,200 figure includes VAT, adding that the true figure paid to the nurse, including travel expenses, was £1,864. The shift covered was one in specialist Intensive Therapy Unit on a Bank Holiday. Defending their spending, Sarah Bloomfield, director of nursing at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, said temporary staff had to be used to cover a shortfall in trained nurses. She highlighted their situation is one shared by many hospitals across the UK. She added: 'We have said consistently that we want to recruit more nurses to reduce our reliance on agency and temporary staff and this has been widely publicised with a number of recruitment events taking place recently to attract new staff. 'We have recruited, or made offers to, more than 150 staff nurses and health care assistants in recent months as part of our efforts to recruit more nursing staff to support our wards and departments. Defending the spend Sarah Bloomfield, director of nursing at the trust, said temporary staff had to be used to cover a shortfall in trained nurses. She said in recent months the hospitals have recruited more than 150 nurses and healthcare assistants . 'These new recruits have included a number who have been offered positions through a successful nursing recruitment event at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital just last week, which we will repeat again on Thursday. 'We’ll continue our efforts to ensure that over the coming months we will see fewer agency nurses on our wards as our new starters get settled in, which will mean better continuity of care and more support for ward teams.' Figures obtained by the Nursing and Midwifery Council also revealed nearly a third of nursing recruits in the UK had to be sought abroad last year. NHS spending on temporary staff has rocketed to a staggering £2.5 billion a year because of a chronic shortage of British nurses. The number of foreign nurses and midwives registered in the past 12 months grew to 8,200, up from just 6,200 a year earlier. Around 7,500 came from the EU - particularly Spain, Italy and Portugal - with others came from further afield, including the Philippines. It also emerged that 29 per cent of new nurses were recruited from abroad in the past 12 months, compared to 11 per cent five years ago.
Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust paid the huge figure .
Equates to £183 an hour and is double to going rate for a neurologist .
Hospital said temporary staff have to be used to cover staffing shortfalls .