PATIENT SAFETY
Interim workforces: The challenges
In January 2019 the NHS Long Term Plan was published with some aspirational ideas about how healthcare needs to evolve over the next 10 years to deliver the needs of the population. Kate Woodhead RGN DMS believes a key unanswered element of the plan was, “Where are the people coming from to deliver this grand scheme for the future?”
The NHS Long Term Plan set out a major shift from acute care to delivering far more care in the community by multidisciplinary teams of people being able to utilise technology to enable better communication and delivery.
Not only do we have a great and increasing demand for healthcare services but we do not have a great recent record on
recruitment and retention, or on workforce planning. We lose people early as they are stressed out so they retire; we lose people early during their training – do we know why? The greater the number of vacancies in
primary care and in the acute system, the more tired the remaining staff become, often leaving for an easier role somewhere else. This is totally unsustainable. It seems from
data that the NHS employs 1.3 million people and currently has 2500 fewer full time GPs than it needs – and, according to The Kings Fund, there has been a significant 43% drop in district nurses employed.1
The Royal
College of Nursing recently reported 40,000 unfilled nursing vacancies, not specifying where those were.2 So, here we are with the recently published Interim People Plan, and the plans will be supplemented with a full People Plan after the autumn Spending Review. The title leaves a lot to be desired.
The interim People Plan has much to say about looking further ahead to ensure we have more than the right people in the right place at the right time, but that they are also contented in their work and adequately supported by available technology.
AUGUST 2019
The ambitious plan was developed with the new Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) in mind, although they are still in the early stages of their development. For those not yet familiar with the new name, the ICSs evolved from other organisations and are formed locally. According to NHS England3 “Successful integrated care systems will take more control of funding and performance with less involvement by national bodies and regulators,” and “Integrated Care Systems will take the lead in planning and commissioning care for their populations and providing system leadership. They bring together NHS providers and commissioners and local authorities to work in partnership in improving health and care in their area.” The interim People Plan has much to say about looking further ahead to ensure we have more than the right people in the right place at the right time, but that they are also contented in their work and adequately supported by available technology. The vision set out, includes many different professions from the workforce, including: doctors; nurses; allied health professionals; pharmacists; healthcare scientists; dentists; non-clinical professions; social workers in the NHS; commissioners; non- executives; and volunteers.4
The plan sets work for the rest of
2019/2020 financial year and those parts of the vision which will be fed into the development of the full People Plan.
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