The chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing has said that planned "efficiency savings" within the NHS can be made without cutting jobs.

Dr Peter Carter was speaking after a RCN survey showed that 83% of the almost 2,000 nurses questioned, were concerned that inadequate staffing levels would lead to patient safety being compromised. Just 7% said that they believed that their workplace had the right number of staff to ensure good quality of care for patients.

The survey comes as the NHS is committed to achieving £20bn of savings by 2015 while the government is pushing through its controversial health reforms which will see primary care trusts abolished and GPs handed control of an £80bn budget.

There are widespread fears that job losses will be inevitable in an effort to achieve the savings but Dr Carter insisted there are alternatives. He said that savings could be made by hospital buying in supplies more efficiently, cutting the amount of unused medicine and employing fewer management consultants.

He said that the savings could be made by targeting all the public money currently being "squandered" by the NHS and added: "With MPs discussing fundamental NHS reform at the same time as jobs, pay and pensions are under threat; I am disturbed as to how little attention is being paid to making the NHS itself a more efficient organisation. It strikes me that there is an urgent need to look at just where the NHS could, and should, be saving money."

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