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Found 247 results
  1. News Article
    Thousands more doctors and nurses will be trained in England every year as part of a government push to plug the huge workforce gaps that plague almost all NHS services. The number of places in medical schools will rise from 7,500 to 10,000 by 2028 and could reach 15,000 by 2031 as a result of the NHS’s first long-term workforce plan. There will also be a big expansion in training places for those who want to become nurses, with the number rising by a third to 40,000 by 2028 – matching the number of nurses the health service currently lacks. Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, hailed the long-awaited plan as “a once in a generation opportunity to put staffing on a sustainable footing for years to come”. Medical groups, health experts and organisations representing NHS staff welcomed the plan as ambitious but overdue. Richard Murray, chief executive of the King’s Fund thinktank, said it could be a “landmark moment” for the health service by providing it with the staff it needs to provide proper care. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 29 June 2023
  2. News Article
    Staff sickness in the NHS in England has reached record levels. Figures for 2022 show an absence rate - the proportion of days lost - of 5.6%, meaning the NHS lost the equivalent of nearly 75,000 staff to illness. This is higher than during the peak pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 - and a 29% rise on the 2019 rate. Mental health problems were the most common cause, responsible for nearly a quarter of absences, the Nuffield Trust analysis of official NHS data shows. Big rises were also seen in cold, coughs, infections and respiratory problems, likely to be linked to the continued circulation of Covid as well as the return of flu last year. The think tank warned the NHS was stuck in a "seemingly unsustainable cycle" of increased work and burnout, which was contributing to staff leaving. The analysis, exclusively for BBC News, comes ahead of the publication of the government and NHS England's long-awaited workforce plan. Read full story Source: BBC News, 29 June 2023
  3. News Article
    The UK risks becoming highly reliant on overseas care workers after nearly 58,000 visas were issued for the sector last year, a report says. Analysis by the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford found that the demand for foreign staff had left the NHS and care homes open to “vulnerabilities” including “exposure to international competition for health workers and risks of exploitation”. The study, commissioned by the employment group ReWAGE, also examined where care workers were coming from. In 2022, 99% of care workers sponsored for work visas in the UK were from non-EU countries. The top countries were India (33%), Zimbabwe (16%), Nigeria (15%) and the Philippines (11%). Dr Madeleine Sumption, the director of the Migration Observatory, said: “Health and care employers have benefited a lot from international recruitment. “But relying this much on overseas recruits also brings risks. For example, care workers on temporary visas are vulnerable to exploitation and the rapid growth in overseas recruitments makes monitoring pay and conditions a real challenge.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 June 2023
  4. News Article
    The NHS is set to undergo the "largest expansion in training and workforce" in its history, Rishi Sunak has said. Speaking to the BBC, the prime minister said the plans would reduce "reliance on foreign-trained healthcare professionals". It comes at a time of record-high waiting lists in the NHS and junior doctors set to stage a five-day strike next month. The full plans are expected to be published next week. Pressed about the length of time it would take to see the results of the changes, Mr Sunak accepted it could take "five, ten, fifteen years for these things to come through", but that did not mean it was not the right thing to do. Read full story Source: BBC News, 25 June 2023
  5. News Article
    More than half of UK doctors have seen or experienced abuse by patients or their relatives in the last year, including incidents in which they have been spat at and threatened. Doctors have variously had their hair ripped out, been backed up against a wall and been racially abused, a survey and dossier of testimonies collated by a medical organisation has revealed. Long delays for care and staff shortages are cited as the main triggers for what NHS leaders say is an increased readiness by the public to be aggressive towards frontline staff. The research by the Medical Protection Society (MPS) found that 56% of the doctors questioned had experienced or witnessed a situation involving verbal or physical abuse over the last year. Almost half said incidents had occurred because of a lack of staff, while 45% blamed it on patients’ frustration at having to wait a long time to be treated. One doctor told the MPS how a “patient’s partner threatened to kill me as he felt his wife had waited too long to be seen”, while another said: “I had a handful of my hair ripped out despite the patient being in handcuffs and with the police.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 22 June 2023
  6. News Article
    Retired doctors will have an option to “keep caring” and re-join the NHS to carry out outpatient appointments in a new initiative to help reduce waiting lists. From autumn, newly-retired doctors will be able to sign up to a new digital platform where they will be able to offer their availability to trusts across England to perform outpatient appointments, either virtually or in person. NHS hospitals will choose the consultant whose skillset and availability best matches the appointments they need covered, which are scheduled and arranged with patients in the normal way. More than four-fifths of people on the waiting list require an outpatient appointment such as a follow-up for cardiology or rheumatology – rather than a surgical procedure. Consultants carrying out remote appointments could be based anywhere in England, which can help those hospitals in areas with higher demand. Those requiring a face-to-face appointment or follow-up will be seen in the usual way. Speaking at NHS Confed Expo, Amanda Pritchard, NHS Chief Executive, said: “Ahead of the NHS 75th birthday in July, this new platform is an innovative example of how we are constantly adapting the way we work to benefit patients by helping to reduce waiting times as well as supporting staff. “Using this digital tool will help us to match patients with retired doctors who we know are keen to stay working in a flexible way so they can keep caring for patients, as well as allowing us to expand capacity to see even more patients – and faster. “NHS staff have already made excellent progress against our Elective Recovery Plan – and this platform will not only help us continue to reduce the longest waits but it will also help us slash agency spend, using the existing capacity of experienced doctors who still have so much to offer the NHS”. Read full story Source: NHS England, 14 June 2023
  7. News Article
    Health leaders have blamed staff shortages for waiting lists reaching another record high, with 7.4 million people in England waiting to start treatment as of the end of April. One NHS leader said the figures showed that unsustainable “pressure continues to pile on an overstretched NHS”, and urged the government to speed up publication of its long-awaited workforce plan, which has been repeatedly postponed. Waiting list figures in England have crept up again after showing signs of improvement in recent months, despite Rishi Sunak citing bringing numbers down as one of the government’s top five priorities for 2023. Downing Street on Thursday insisted the NHS was “continuing to make progress to ensure patients are seen more quickly”, pointing to record numbers of doctors and nurses in the NHS. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 8 June 2023
  8. News Article
    Community diagnostic centres (CDCs) — the government’s flagship policy for recovering cancer testing after Covid — will have up to 6,500 fewer staff than they need by 2025, according to NHS England projections seen by HSJ. The workforce “gap analysis” modelling highlights large and sustained staffing shortfalls across most professional groups required to run the CDCs until at least 2025. It was released after a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Health and Social Care, which said it was given the analysis by NHSE. The total gap between demand and supply for the programme by 2025 is estimated at 6,663, out of a total demand of 61,152 (about 1 in 10 staff). Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 8 June 2023
  9. News Article
    The Royal College of Radiologists is warning that all four UK nations are facing "chronic staff shortages", with cancer patients waiting too long for vital tests and treatments. Half of all cancer units are now reporting frequent delays for both radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Ministers say a workforce strategy for the NHS in England is due shortly. The plan, which is meant to spell out how the government will plug staffing gaps over the next 15 years, has been repeatedly delayed, to the frustration of some in the health service. In June 2022, Carol Fletcher, from South Wales, finally had her routine screening appointment for breast cancer, which was itself overdue. "It took another eight weeks after my mammogram before I was told there might be something wrong," she said. Since her cancer diagnosis, there have been more waits - for scans, tests, surgery and then chemo. "I was told that I might not get results back [quickly] after my mastectomy because they haven't got enough pathologists, so there was another eight-week delay for chemotherapy," she said. "I can't plan for the future and it's had a huge impact on my family." Read full story Source: BBC News, 8 June 2023
  10. News Article
    Plans to procure more district nursing courses to start this September have been paused because of the merger of Health Education England into NHS England, HSJ understands. An email sent last month from a commissioning officer at NHSE’s workforce, training and education directorate – the new HEE – said procurement of new district nursing courses from universities would be paused “until further notice”, due to the “ongoing merger”. Since 2009, the number of district nurses working in the English NHS has fallen drastically, from around 7,000 to around 3,900. Steph Lawrence, executive director of nursing and allied health professionals at Leeds Community Healthcare Trust, said the decision to pause the expansion of courses was a “huge concern” as numbers of district nurses need to grow “at a much faster rate”. “This is a major safety issue for safe and effective care in the community if we don’t have the appropriate numbers of nurses trained. We may also lose nurses as well who want to progress and expand their knowledge,” Ms Lawrence said. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 5 June 2023
  11. News Article
    The NHS in England faces an uphill struggle to improve productivity as it confronts record waiting lists, with data suggesting that an increase in staff numbers alone will not transform its performance. Creaking infrastructure, a sicker population and a reliance on less experienced staff are hampering the health service’s attempts to treat people in greater numbers than before the pandemic, according to health experts. This difficult context is casting a shadow over the government’s goal that hospital waiting lists should be falling by the next election. Read full story (paywalled) Source: Financial Times, 1 June 2023
  12. News Article
    NHS England has expanded its drive to increase overseas recruitment, introducing funding for trusts to hire more types of health professionals from abroad. Employers are now able to use national NHS England funding to recruit physiotherapists, therapeutic radiographers and operating department practitioners from overseas. Until now, within allied health professionals, the scheme has only covered diagnostic radiographers, occupational therapists and podiatrists. None of the professions are on the government’s shortage occupation list. NHSE said it decided to expand the AHP scheme to more staff groups where it had decided there were NHS shortages, and others where it had identified there was global availability of staff. For example, it said other groups such as prosthetics professionals still could not be recruited from abroad as there is limited international supply. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 30 May 2023
  13. News Article
    NHS leaders have raised concerns about the delay to the long-awaited workforce plan, after the health secretary, Steve Barclay, refused to give a deadline for its publication and with rumours suggesting it is considered too costly. The plan, which was expected to be published on Tuesday, appears to have been delayed, according to the deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery. Barclay blamed the pandemic and “various things that have been happening in recent years” for the delay during broadcast interviews over the weekend. He had previously promised that the plan to increase the number of doctors and nurses would be published before the next general election. Cordery said the plan, which aims to fix the UK’s crumbling healthcare system by plugging chronic staff shortages but which has already been postponed from last year, was needed “as quickly as possible”. Until this weekend NHS Providers – which represents all England’s hospital, ambulance, community and mental health trusts – had believed publication of the plan was “imminent”. Cordery suggested that the failure to release it could be linked to the need for funding. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 29 May 2023
  14. Content Article
    Despite steps towards closing the gap between mental and physical health services, many people still cannot access services and face long waits for treatment. Addressing workforce challenges in mental health services will be crucial to improving this situation. This report, commissioned and supported by NHS Confederation’s Mental Health Network, takes stock of progress across the country in staffing the single largest profession within the mental health workforce: nurses.
  15. News Article
    Britain’s reliance on foreign nurses has reached “unsustainable” levels, the government has been warned as new analysis reveals that international recruits has accounted for two thirds of the rise in numbers since 2019. Ministers have repeatedly promised to boost the domestic supply of health staff amid warnings that reliance on international workers leaves the NHS at the mercy of global labour markets. Overall, a fifth of the UK’s nursing, midwifery and nursing associate workforce originally trained overseas. The figures will reignite concerns that nations such as the Philippines, traditionally a key source for the NHS, are being increasingly targeted by countries including Germany and Canada. Senior NHS leaders fear the health service could be left in a precarious position if increased competition results in nurses choosing alternative destinations, resulting in a shortfall for the UK. The health service in England already has one post in ten vacant. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 18 May 2023
  16. News Article
    Maternity services in Gloucestershire will remain shut for months because of staff shortages, it has been confirmed. The Aveta Birth Unit in Cheltenham and Stroud's post-natal facilities are not expected to re-open until at least October, bosses say. The announcement by Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust means women will have been unable to use the services for more than a year. Maternity campaigners say new mothers are not getting support they need. The trust said it had a long-term commitment to both units, but they cannot reopen safely at the moment. The Aveta unit has been shut since last June and Stroud's six postnatal beds have been closed since September. It means new mothers are forced to go home 12 hours after giving birth, or if they have medical needs being sent to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital. Read full story Source: BBC News, 19 May 2023
  17. News Article
    UK ministers must set out how to recruit and retain thousands more mental health nurses to plug the profession’s biggest staff shortage, healthcare leaders are warning. Mental health nurses account for nearly a third of all nursing vacancies across England, resulting in overstretched services that are struggling to deliver timely care, according to research carried out by the NHS Confederation’s mental health network. Sean Duggan, the network’s chief executive, said: “Mental health leaders and their teams are pulling out all the stops in what are very constrained circumstances, but they cannot be expected to solve this staffing crisis alone. “The knock-on effect means that the mental health crisis the nation is facing will in turn become a crisis for the whole healthcare system and the country. This relentless pressure on mental health staff cannot be allowed to continue with the ultimate impact being on the patients who most need that care.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 16 May 2023
  18. News Article
    Nurses fear they could be taken to court or struck off over the level of care they are able to give to patients, a union has warned, as the NHS stands on the brink of six more months of strikes. The Royal College of Nursing, one of the two unions to turn down the recent government pay offer to NHS staff, revealed that over nine in 10 A&E nurses had raised concerns that patients may be receiving unsafe care and that patient dignity, privacy and confidentiality is compromised. Six in 10 fear they will be struck off the nursing register or have a court case brought against them as a result of patient harm due to their working conditions, the RCN said. Ms Cullen insisted that patient safety is “at the centre of everything that we do” but warned that it “cannot be guaranteed on any day of the week”, given it is missing 47,000 nurses “every single day and night”. Speaking before its annual congress in Brighton, which begins on Monday, some nurses described themselves as “broken” and feeling “suicidal”, with corridor treatment being deemed “degrading for patients” and as “destroying staff morale”. Read full story Source: The Independent, 15 May 2023
  19. Content Article
    Peter Griffiths and Chiara Dall'Ora, in this BMJ Editorial, discuss the staffing shortages in the NHS and what needs to be done.
  20. Content Article
    The aim of this Australian study was to assess the impact of adding assistants in nursing to acute care hospital ward nurse staffing on adverse patient outcomes using administrative health data. The results suggest that the introduction of assistants in nursing into ward staffing in an additive role should be done under a protocol which clearly defines their role, scope of practice, and working relationship with registered nurses, and the impact on patient care should be monitored.
  21. News Article
    Staff shortages forced pharmacies to shut for 100,000 hours in a year, new figures show, just as the government has unveiled plans to shift more GP work their way. The data, shared exclusively with The Independent by the organisation which represents pharmacies in England, also showed that almost 1,000 establishments closed for good between October 2016 and November 2022. The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) figures revealed that pharmacies in the most deprived areas were more likely to shut permanently due to lack of staff, with areas such as Birmingham and Manchester among the worst affected. The figures come as the government announced plans on Tuesday to allow pharmacists to prescribe medicines for conditions including earache, sore throats and urinary tract infections without GP involvement. However, experts have said the plans are unlikely to significantly reduce pressure on GP practices as prescriptions for these conditions make up just 3 per cent of all appointments. And the King’s Fund health think tank warned of the potential for a postcode lottery – saying some pharmacies will not be able to offer the services because they may not have access to diagnostic tools, or sufficient staff and consultation rooms. Read full story Source: The Independent, 10 May 2023
  22. News Article
    School-leavers could receive on-the-job training as part of an attempt to help address NHS workforce shortages, under plans to allow tens of thousands of doctors and nurses to join the health service via apprenticeships. Up to 1 in 10 doctors and a third of nurses could be trained through this vocational path in the coming years under the NHS workforce plan. The NHS’s doctor apprenticeship scheme is due to start in September, where medics in training will be able to earn money while they study. The concept was first introduced as an alternative route into medicine circumventing the standard undergraduate or graduate university programmes. Dr Latifa Patel, workforce lead for the British Medical Association, said innovative approaches to education and training are welcome but there were huge question marks over how far medical apprenticeships can solve the recruitment crisis. Patel said: “We don’t know if medical schools and employing organisations are going to be able to produce medical degree programmes to meet individual apprenticeship needs while also meeting the same high standards of training experienced by traditional medical students. “We have little evidence on whether the apprentice model will work at scale, and whether employers will want to take the investment risk with no guarantee of a return." Read full story Source: The Guardian, 10 May 2023
  23. News Article
    Managers at a medical rehabilitation unit are "covering it up" when issues are raised, a whistleblower has said. The whistleblower claimed Cambridge Rehabilitation Unit (CRU) management bullied staff who flagged concerns over shortages and unsafe practice. Documents detail claims of "dangerous" staffing levels, patients left in bed all day without therapy and a one-star food hygiene rating. Through the Freedom of Information Act, the BBC discovered three whistleblowing complaints were made to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) between May and August last year. The first said wards "run on dangerous levels of staff" and no action was taken when staff flagged concerns. The second stated there was "bullying occurring from management when staff raise concerns regarding short staffing and unsafe practice". They said: "When issues relating to patient safety are raised... management are 'covering it up'." Read full story Source: BBC News, 9 May 2023
  24. News Article
    A major acute trust has warned ahead of next week’s nursing strike that it will face ‘very severe staffing shortages’ in children’s A&E, with ‘as few as one nurse per ward’, much less critical care capacity, and fewer operating theatres open than on Christmas Day. Cambridge University Hospitals Foundation Trust’s medical director said in a note, seen by HSJ, that the hospital would only have 60 to 70% of its critical care beds open and that “it is not possible to guarantee patient safety on our wards over the forthcoming weekend” with severe staffing shortages in “almost all areas”. The Royal College of Nursing is planning no derogations (exceptions) to its planned 48-hour walkout, from 8pm on Sunday until 8pm on Tuesday, whereas its previous action has exempted emergency care. There have been national warnings about the significant safety threat posed, but the CUH message, sent to all staff by medical director Ashley Shaw, sets out a more stark picture of critical services scaled back. It says: ”Our current information indicates there will be a severe shortage of nurses in almost all ward areas, with as few as 1 nurse per ward per shift." Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 26 April 2023
  25. News Article
    Two former senior managers at a large mental healthcare provider have told the BBC they had concerns about the safety of patients and staff. The whistleblowers claim they felt pressure to cut costs and fill beds. The Priory Group, which receives more than £600m of public money each year, is the biggest single private provider of mental health services to the NHS. The company denies the claims and says it successfully treats tens of thousands of patients each year. It adds its services "remain amongst the safest in the UK". The former members of the Priory Group's senior management said that, when they were working for the company, they found it difficult to recruit or retain staff, due to poor pay and conditions. They believe this resulted in patients being placed on wards that did not have staff equipped with the right skills to handle their conditions. Read full story Source: BBC News, 26 April 2023
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