Royal College Of Nursing has issued a warning over the state of the NHS

The NHS is at breaking point, the Royal College of Nursing has warned on Monday.

With nursing positions at risk of being axed, the union said the health service is at crisis point, with figures from its members showing that NHS nurses are already "overburdened."

Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the RCN, delivered a stark warning to those in control:

"Yet again, and despite numerous warnings, NHS organisations are making short-sighted cuts across the UK.

"Nurses are being stretched too thin, and many are approaching breaking point. Inevitably, patient care is going to suffer.

"We are now seeing a clear and worrying picture of a health service which is struggling.

Health secretary Andrew Lansley is likely to receive a frosty reception at Monday's annual RCN conference, where he is delivering the opening address.

The minister is tasked with pushing through the government's controversial Health and Social Care bill, which hopes to shift care out of hospitals onto community nurses.

However the Royal College of Nursing said community nurses were among those facing cuts, meaning that government plans to move care from acute hospitals to community sites were a "facade".

Lansley will face a question and answer session at the nurses’ annual conference in Harrogate, to answer their concerns.

The RCN said 61,000 posts were at risk of being slashed across the health service, including nursing and other jobs, with 26,000 already lost over the last two years

The loss of so many jobs showed the "weakness" of government pledges to protect the front line.

Fewer than one in 10 of 2,600 community nurses polled by the RCN said they had enough time to meet the needs of their patients, while nine out of 10 revealed that their caseload had increased in the past year.

Dr Peter Carter added that cuts and underinvestment risked a "revolving door" for patients, who are discharged from hospital only to find there is no support in the community so have to be readmitted to hospital.

"It is struggling to keep people out of hospital because of pressures on the community, and it is struggling to discharge them with support when they leave. Very soon, patients will be left with nowhere to turn.

"This is a revolving door for patients, but it also represents a false economy at a time when there is no money to spare. We want care to be delivered closer to home, and we want community nurses to be empowered to keep their patients out of hospital, but at the moment this shift in the way care is delivered is simply a facade, with the community struggling to cope with the workload it has now, let alone the one it faces in the future.

"This is a harsh reminder that both acute and community care are overloaded and the staffing levels are so low in both that there can be nowhere for patients to turn."

The RCN said planned job cuts included more than 400 in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, a similar number in Sandwell and West Birmingham, 675 in Blackpool and a 23% reduction in staffing numbers in South London up to 2015.

The government was urged to take the "stark" figures seriously.

However Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Health Minister Simon Burns have refused to acknowledge the statistics, and pledged to continue with reforms to the NHS

Clegg told ITV's Daybreak.

"We simply do not recognise them, we actually think the numbers are relatively stable.

"This year we are training about double the number of community nurses and health visitors than we did last year."

He said: "Unlike other public services, we protected the spending on the NHS and increased it year on year on year. That shows our commitment to the NHS."

Health Minister Simon Burns backed Clegg, saying: "Official statistics show that there are only 450 fewer qualified nursing staff in England than in September 2009 while the number of managers has been slashed by 15%.

"The number of nurses to beds in hospitals is going up and in 2011-12 we expect to train just over 2,300 community nurses and health visitors - double the number of places last year.

"We are giving nurses in hospitals and in the community more time to care. We want to remove excessive paperwork and bureaucracy and have asked the Nursing and Care Quality Forum to find ways to free up nurses to spend as much time as possible with patients.

"The Health and Social Care Act will make shifting care out of hospitals and closer to people's homes simpler. No one should stay in hospital longer than they need to and we are already investing £300 million to help people return to their homes with the support that they need more quickly after a spell in hospital.

"This government believes in the NHS - that is why we have protected the NHS budget and are investing an extra £12.5 billion over the course of this Parliament."

A spokeswoman for Blackpool Teaching Hospitals said the trust has not made any cuts to "frontline" staff and is not planning to in the next year.

She said: "Providing safe and quality care to our patients is our key priority and we have actually recruited an additional 100 nurses over the past six months and are still actively recruiting more nurses this year."

The spokeswoman said the trust lost an "overall workforce" of 300 posts in the financial year of 2011/12 but none were nursing jobs.