Training
Narrowing the healthcare skills gap
Apprenticeship degrees are often underutilised, but they are a good way to upskill staff, while simultaneously looking after practice needs. However, given the NHS’ unique challenges, suitable upskilling opportunities are often hard to find. In this article, Stacey Hayes-Allen, Director of Corporate Partnerships at Arden University, discusses how the health and care sector can utilise apprenticeships to ease the sector’s widening skills gap.
80% of UK employers are struggling to find the talent they need.1
If we look back to 2010,2 only
nine per cent of employers felt that filling job vacancies was challenging, meaning there has been a staggering increase of 71% of employers struggling in the intervening years. The healthcare industry hasn’t been immune
to this – staff shortages in the sector are rife throughout the country. According to the British Medical Association (BMA): “The NHS has long carried a stubbornly high number of unfilled vacancies, a problem that far predates the pandemic.”3
Plan4
In fact, the NHS Long Term Workforce sets out the strategy and commitments
to address existing and future workforce challenges and focuses on the role training, retention and reformation will play in solving the worker shortage. Apprenticeship ambitions feature heavily in the plan, including aims to triple apprenticeship training for all clinical staff by 2031/32. The goal is to provide 22% of all training for
clinical staff through apprenticeship routes, up from just 7%. To support this ambition, the aim is to reach 16% by 2028/29 to ensure enough staff are trained in the right roles. The Plan touches on the role apprenticeships will play, stating how they “will help widen access to opportunities for people from all backgrounds and in underserved areas to join the NHS”. There are also plans to introduce medical
degree apprenticeships, with pilots now occurring. But aside from the lack of medical professionals, there’s another issue at hand that the healthcare industry needs to solve: the lack of diversity in senior leadership. Research has found that maintaining diversity in the executive healthcare leadership team is important as there tend to be differences in perspective which, in turn, impact the solutions to improve access to healthcare for under-represented groups.
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In healthcare, leadership is decisive in influencing the quality of care and the performance of hospitals. How staff are treated significantly influences care provision, so leaders need to understand how they can ensure staff are cared for, valued, supported and respected. Research suggests inclusion is a critical part of the answer.5 Utilising apprenticeships has recently been emphasised as a way to address workforce shortages – but on top of this, they often provide more opportunities for people from diverse backgrounds. This will make the NHS more accessible, diverse, inclusive and representative of the communities it serves. As well as this, research6
has shown that
if employees feel happy and engaged at their NHS Trust, they’re more likely to leave a positive impact on the Trust itself. This is because employee engagement closely
correlates with staff wellbeing which, in turn, impacts absenteeism, staff turnover and overall patient satisfaction. Several factors can impact employee engagement, such as good senior management that supports well- structured appraisals, understands effective line management and incentivises learning opportunities.
One thing that works well for those in the healthcare sector, however, is providing ongoing learning opportunities. This comes after research6
also suggested that NHS employees
require information to help them perform well in their jobs, with frequent feedback building confidence and supporting the development of new and improved ways of providing patient care. This can be achieved when employees have trust in their supervisors and leaders, as well as access to effective learning and development opportunities, such as degree apprenticeships.
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