The Briefing Room: The staffing crisis in the NHS (25 August 2022)

Summary

The NHS often appears to be in a state of permanent crisis. Recently, there've been headlines about long waiting times for ambulances and the huge backlog for routine surgery. Before that, the NHS faced a two-year pandemic which may rear its head again this winter.

But the NHS also has a big underlying problem that it has tens of thousands of vacancies for doctors, nurses and other medical workers – and that makes all the other pressures on the NHS even harder to handle.

So why does the NHS have a staffing problem? And what can be done to fix it?

Content

Joining David Aaronovitch in The Briefing Room podcast are:

• Annabelle Collins, Senior Correspondent at Health Service Journal
• Alison Leary, Professor of Healthcare and Workforce Modelling at London South Bank University
• Suzie Bailey, Director of Leadership and Organisational Development at The Kings Fund
• Mark Pearson, Deputy Director of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs at the OECD,
• Nigel Edwards, Chief Executive of the Nuffield Trust.