A hospital accident and emergency doctor was paid £1,500 to work for ten hours.

The consultant was drafted in by Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust to cover staff shortages.

The Argus can reveal East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust also paid £1,200 to a consultant covering an eight-hour shift in the rheumatology department.

This is in sharp contrast to the £100 to £130 per shift paid to the average Grade 5 nurse.

Unisons have criticised the amounts being paid and say trusts need to do more to attract more doctors to work full-time at their hospitals instead of having to pay for expensive locum cover.

A Freedom of Information request by The Argus reveals the county’s three main hospital trusts spent more than £14.3 million employing locum doctors to cover shifts between April and the end of January this year.

This includes periods when hospitals were under extreme winter pressures as they battled to deal with a surge in demand while coping with bed shortages caused by delays in patients being discharged.

A Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals spokeswoman said: “As in every industry it is more expensive to employ temporary staff and staff who work unsociable hours or who have specialist skills which are scarce, cost the most.”

East Sussex Healthcare medical director Andy Slater said: “Like other NHS Trusts we also experience difficulty in recruiting doctors in certain specialities due to a national shortage of doctors in these areas. “On other occasions due to sickness we need locum medical cover at short notice to ensure we can continue to provide a safe level of care.”

Denise Farmer, Western Sussex Hospitals director of leadership and organisational development, said: “We are dedicated to recruiting the very best clinicians and currently medical vacancies are the lowest they have ever been despite a well-documented national shortage of doctors in certain specialities.

“The trust makes use of locum doctors when necessary to ensure our patients receive the highest standards of care at all times.”

GMB regional organiser Gary Palmer said: “These figures are a damning indication of the trust’s overall inability in both failing to attract NHS front-line doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals to work at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals and of a worsening capacity to be able to retain desperately needed staff.”

Caroline Fife, regional Unison representative, said it was important the trust should be able to employ permanent staff.

She said: “Staff are trained in the way the trust operates to provide high quality patient care.

“Locums are not integrated into the workforce in the same way.”