30.10.17
Workforce planning ‘not fit for purpose’ as clinical staff numbers fall
The number of nurses and GPs in England has fallen over the year so far to April, despite a 2% increase in the overall workforce.
General increases have been driven by a rise in managers and consultants, according to a Health Foundation report released today.
The organisation says increasing admissions coupled with a reduction in frontline and community nurse numbers could overstretch services and seriously undermine the progress achieved since the Francis Report in 2013.
Increasing instability in the workforce has a financial cost to the NHS, but is also hitting patients hard due to a lack of continuity in care. In addition, the number of students applying for undergraduate nursing courses in England has decreased, with a big fall among older applicants.
Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, said the results of the survey were worrying because it put services in danger and risked any progress made in staff retention.
Mortimer continued: “While national support is important, particularly in relation to funding the training of existing staff, employers in the NHS are also taking action in their own organisations to reduce rates of staff leaving the NHS.
“To support this, NHS Employers recently published a guide to staff retention, sharing existing best practice to help all trusts to take rapid action.
“The issue of workforce instability has also been exacerbated by the uncertainty over the future of EU staff working in the health service, and we know it will be necessary to continue recruiting from Europe and elsewhere in the world, as it won’t be possible to fill gaps with increased domestic supply in the immediate term.”
The government has set a target to fill roughly half of the 5,000 GPs needed by 2021 through employing foreign doctors, but the latest report shows that only 38 were recruited in the first six months of 2017.
Non-EU foreign doctors could be hugely important to the future of health services with fears that looming Brexit agreements could force many European staff to leave the country.
“There is a growing gap between rhetoric about the government’s ambitions to grow the NHS workforce, and the reality of falling numbers of nurses and GPs,” explained Health Foundation director of research and economics, Anita Charlesworth.
“This year has been characterised by a series of one-off announcements and initiatives, beset by unrealistic timescales and no overall strategy. The challenges and risks ahead for the NHS are well known, and must be met by collective action, led by the government, to put in place a coherent strategy to provide a sustainable workforce for the NHS.
“With winter approaching and staffing numbers in critical areas once again declining, the NHS will be relying on the efforts of its staff to meet the inevitable rising pressures. But in the long-term, both the people working for and the people using the NHS deserve better.”
Government initiatives to create 21,000 new posts in mental health by 2020 were also questioned. There are reservations about whether the target is achievable, or will provide staff with the right level of skills and training.
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