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NEWS NHS staff shortages threatens recovery
The Royal College of Physicians’ latest survey reveals that more than a quarter of senior consultant physicians expect to retire within three years, many within 18 months, while the majority of trainees entering the NHS (56%) are interested in working part-time. A fifth of doctors already work part-time, and the new figures from the RCP suggest this trend is set to increase as wider expectations around work/life balance change. The RCP is calling on new Health and Social Care Secretary, Sajid Javid, to increase capacity. It wants a doubling of medical school places to avoid medical staff shortages worsening in the future, with increased funding for social care, while action is also needed to address health inequalities and reduce demands upon the NHS. At the end of the most challenging year in its history, 43% of doctors have not reverted to their original working pattern, according to the RCP’s survey, with well over half of respondents (57%) now working from home at least some of the time. Over two thirds (67%) said working from home has improved their work/life balance. Doctors would like this shift to more remote working during the pandemic to become the norm. More than 60% (72% of trainees) want opportunities for remote IT access, online meetings and remote working to be available in the future.
While almost two thirds (65%) reported that their organisation had made changes to enable more flexible working during the pandemic, just as many of those who wanted to work more flexibly thought this would be difficult or impossible (36%) as thought it would be easy (35%). The RCP says that the key challenge stymieing more flexible working patterns is not the willingness of NHS Trusts, but a lack of workforce, with 79% of those expecting flexible working to be difficult citing “not enough medical staff”. While 59% of doctors thought their department would support a
request to work more flexibly, 41% didn’t think so, with more than three quarters (76%) citing not enough medical staff as the reason.
The findings coincide with the latest census of clinical oncologists by the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) which found that the NHS needs at least another 189 clinical oncologists to meet demand. More than half of UK cancer centre clinical directors (52%) say oncologist shortages are negatively impacting patient care. This year’s newly trained consultants will only fill 55% of vacancies and the RCR warned that, if nothing is done to retain exhausted staff and expand the workforce, by 2025 the shortfall of clinical oncology consultants in the NHS will be between 21-29%. The survey report found consultant numbers have barely risen outside of England and are nowhere near close to meeting demand, let alone able to roll out improvements to cancer care. Clinical oncology directors responding to the RCR census said staff shortages are leading to treatment delays, long waits and “increases
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in sub-optimal care and complaints”. At the end of 2020, there was the equivalent of 913 full-time clinical oncology consultants working across the UK NHS. An extra 46 full-time consultants joined the workforce last year – with 41 of those based in England. Meanwhile, the number of newly diagnosed cancer patients needing non- surgical treatment across the UK was rising by an estimated 168,000 every year before coronavirus hit. Now, understaffed cancer teams are having to manage a return to pre- coronavirus levels of demand – but working at a slower rate due to social distancing and extra hospital cleaning – alongside a looming backlog of tens of thousands of cancer patients who missed out on diagnoses and treatment last year. The new RCR report shows there are now 87 vacant posts for clinical oncology consultants across the NHS – with an estimated 48 new UK recruits due to finish training to fill those jobs this year. By factoring in doctors’ overtime as well as vacancies, the RCR calculates the real shortfall of NHS clinical oncology consultants is at least 189, or 17% of the UK workforce.
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