A hospital has committed to spending £3.2million on creating new general nursing and nurse manager jobs in a bid to turn its financial difficulties around.

According to Nursing Times, Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals Trust had overspent by £18.2million before the end of September and has decided to boost nurse levels to help alleviate pressure from other wards. In the long-term, the Trust hopes to close seven of these alleviated wards and save money. However, so far only one has closed.

"The extra nursing staff are to act as 'pump primers', to produce a step change in the quality of care, help patients recover to return home more quickly and, through this, free resources tied up with agency staff and wards that would not be needed," a spokeswoman for the Trust said.

32 extra nurses, 31 healthcare assistants and one therapist were employed by the Trust to help care of the extra 71,000 patients the Trust treated up until September.

The Trust also said it had suffered from a high rate of delayed transfers of care which affected older patients more. However, since creating the new jobs, the average length of stay for older persons has gone down by 2 days, half as many people have fallen over at hospital and a third less people have experienced ulcers.