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Found 596 results
  1. News Article
    Healthcare staff from the European Union can join or continue to work in the NHS for the next five years without undergoing additional exams or further assessments, the government has decided. The “standstill provisions”, which were put in place after the UK left the European Union in 2020, have been extended by government until 2028. The NHS has become increasingly reliant on recruiting staff from overseas, particularly nurses, but has seen a significant drop in the number of staff joining from the European Union post-Brexit. The review by the Department of Health and Social Care said: “Retaining the standstill provisions for a temporary period of five years will support the [DHSC’s] ambition to attract and recruit overseas healthcare professionals, without introducing complex and burdensome registration routes. “[European Economic Area]-qualified healthcare professionals will be able to continue to register with the relevant professional regulator, without the need to sit additional professional exams, mitigating delays to registration and employment in the NHS.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 29 June 2023
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. News Article
    GP services "will collapse in Wales and the NHS will follow" soon after unless urgent support is provided, the British Medical Association (BMA) has warned. As patient levels rise, numbers of GP surgeries and doctors are falling amid inadequate resources and unsustainable workloads, BMA Cymru Wales has claimed. It has written to the Welsh government, urging more funding and staff help. The Welsh government said it was acting to cut pressure on GPs and increasing services by community pharmacists. Launching its Save Our Surgeries campaign, the BMA said the number of GP practices in Wales had decreased by 18% in the past decade from 470 to 386. Read full story Source: BBC News, 28 June 2023
  5. 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
  6. News Article
    Doctors suffering from burnout are far more likely to be involved in incidents where patients’ safety is compromised, a global study has found. Burned-out medics are also much more likely to consider quitting, regret choosing medicine as their career, be dissatisfied with their job and receive low satisfaction ratings from patients. The findings, published in the BMJ, have raised fresh concern over the welfare and pressures on doctors in the NHS, given the extensive evidence that many are experiencing stress and exhaustion due to overwork. A joint team of British and Greek researchers analysed 170 previous observational studies of the links between burnout among doctors, their career engagement and quality of patient care. Those papers were based on the views and experience of 239,246 doctors in countries including the US, UK and others in Africa, Asia and elsewhere globally. They found that burned-out medics were twice as likely as their peers to have been involved in patient safety incidents, to show low levels of professionalism and to have been rated poorly by patients for the quality of the care they have provided. Doctors aged 20 to 30 and those working in A&E or intensive care were most likely to have burnout. It was defined as comprising emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation – a “negative, callous” detachment from their job – and a sense of reduced personal accomplishment. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 14 September 2022
  7. News Article
    Liz Truss has been warned against “fantasy predictions” that the NHS can return to normal without radical change and was told that “unacceptable standards” are being normalised. In a rare political intervention, the professional standards body for the UK’s 220,000 doctors agreed that the NHS was routinely letting down patients. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges said politicians must be prepared for radical changes to save the health service. Closing smaller hospitals, accepting that routine dentistry cannot be free for everyone and a return of Covid volunteers to allow doctors to treat more patients were all suggested by the head of the academy. The academy released a report that declared the NHS was in crisis, writing: “The system is providing increasing proportions of care or services which are sub-standard, threaten patient safety, and should not be acceptable in a country with the resources that we have in the United Kingdom. If we do not act with urgency, we risk permanently normalising the unacceptable standards we now witness daily.” The report sets out a series of recommendations for reform, including boosting staff numbers, reforming social care and spending more on technology. Helen Stokes-Lampard, the academy’s chairwoman, said patients were facing a “dismal winter” and that politicians must take difficult decisions. “If we don’t make changes it will inevitably deteriorate further,” she said. “The demand isn’t going away, the pressure isn’t going away, which is why the challenge for our government and for our whole society is to confront these issues and have a difficult conversation.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 9 September 2022
  8. News Article
    GPs have warned of a ‘tsunami of demand’ this winter as patient contacts surged 200% during the pandemic. One of the largest GP providers in the UK, Modality Partnership, told The Independent it received 4.8 million calls from patients in one year alone with around a quarter going unanswered every day. The provider, which covers 500,000 patients across the country, said its practices were now working above “safe levels” with 50 appointments a day per GP, far higher than the 35 advised by the British Medical Association. Speaking with The Independent, Vincent Sai, chief executive and partner at Modality said the new health secretary Therese Coffey must “not point fingers” and “not find a scapegoat” as “every part of the system is under pressure. Every player in the health system is under the cosh.” Dr Sai said: “We believe patient contacts have increased 200 per cent, over the last few years. The expectation is that GP practices have maybe four to five patient contacts per year, but if you just look at just the number of phone calls alone, it’s showing that it’s much more now. “So something is broken somewhere...there’s more work, there are fewer people. People say I can’t get access to my GP and the hypothesis is they’re just lazy and not working, but it’s not the case.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 7 September 2022
  9. News Article
    Unfilled specialised medical consultant roles and an over-reliance on overworked, internationally trained graduates for non-consultant hospital doctors are among key risks to patient safety identified by the Irish Medical Council. The council, which is the regulatory body for the medical profession, sets out the risks to healthcare for the first time in its workforce intelligence report that breaks down the make-up of the medical register and explains why doctors are leaving the health system. More than a third of all clinically active doctors are on the general register, which is a key risk to patient safety because consultant and specialist roles are not being filled and “a considerable proportion” of non-consultant hospital doctors are required to perform the duties of consultants. The report found that the majority of non-consultant hospital doctors are trained overseas and that the health system overly relied on these doctors who reported being “overworked, undervalued, experiencing discrimination and unable to access specialist training.” “Aside from the individual impact on the doctors, the treatment of international medical graduates has serious implications for patient safety,” the council said. In another risk identified by the regulatory body, more than a quarter of doctors reported working more than 48 hours a week, in breach of the European Working Time Directive. This has further serious implications for patient safety,” the council said. Read full story Source: Irish Times, 1 September 2022
  10. News Article
    Ministers will introduce legislation as soon as parliament returns on Monday to tackle the NHS’s worsening staffing crisis by making it easier for overseas nurses and dentists to work in the UK. The move is part of a drive by the health secretary, Steve Barclay, to increase overseas recruitment to help plug workforce gaps in health and social care. Barclay believes thousands of extra health professionals will come as a result of new rules making it easier for medical regulators to register those who have qualified abroad. If the change proves successful it will help pave the way for more nurses and dentists coming to work in Britain from countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, the Philippines and Malaysia. However, critics claim the policy is a stop-gap that is no substitute for ramping up the supply of homegrown staff and risks worsening the lack of health workers in other countries that are struggling with shortages of their own. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 5 September 2022
  11. News Article
    The number of posts lying vacant across the NHS in England has reached a “staggering” record high of 132,139 – almost 10% of its planned workforce. The number at the end of June was up sharply from three months earlier when there were 105,855 vacancies, quarterly personnel figures show. NHS leaders said the huge number of empty posts showed why the health service is in a state of deepening crisis, with patients facing long waits for almost every type of care. The previous highest number of vacancies for full-time-equivalent staff was 111,864, recorded at the end of June 2019. The new number represents 9.7% of the NHS’s planned staffing levels – a new high. As recently as March 2021 there were 76,082 vacancies. Danny Mortimer, the chief executive of NHS Employers, said: “These figures paint a bleak picture. A jump in nearly 30,000 staff vacancies – equivalent to the entire staffing of a large NHS hospital – show an alarming trend across the NHS of rising levels of vacancies.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 1 September 2022
  12. News Article
    Nurses at 15 hospitals in the Twin Cities area (Minneapolis-St Paul) and Duluth, Minnesota, that are negotiating new union contracts with their respective hospitals have overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike. A date for the work stoppage has not been set yet by the union, the Minnesota Nurses Association, which represents about 15,000 nurses who voted on the strike authorization, but a 10-day notice must be given ahead of any strike. If a strike is carried out, it would be one of the largest nurses’ strikes in US history. Jayme Wicklund, a registered nurse at the Children’s hospital in St Paul, Minnesota, and member of the negotiating committee, said, “We need more resources to take care of the patients. The hospitals are very focused on wages. We have to be comparable to other places. But that’s all that they focus on. Once you start talking about wages, they don’t want to talk about the other important issues around patient safety or actually, other ways to save money.” Read full story Source: The Guardian (23 August 2022)
  13. News Article
    Up to 100 nurses are to be recruited from Nepal to work in the NHS, despite global restrictions on employing health workers because of staff shortages in the country. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Government of Nepal have signed a new government-to-government agreement regarding the recruitment of Nepali health professionals to the UK. The move comes after the new health and social care secretary Steve Barclay announced plans to “significantly increase” overseas recruitment of health workers to help mitigate staff shortages in the UK. A 15-month pilot phase will initially see up to 100 nurses recruited from Nepal to work at Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Read full story Source: Nursing Times (23 August 2022)
  14. News Article
    Liz Truss has pledged to halt the exodus of doctors from the NHS to tackle the Covid backlog and surging waiting lists. The frontrunner in the Conservative leadership race is planning to unveil a series of radical reforms that will stop doctors from retiring early and entice retirees to return. One in 10 consultants and GPs is expected to retire in the next 18 months because of pension rules that mean they are "paying to work". A source close to her said she would deal with it by “cutting red tape and dealing with issues in the pension and tax system that currently act as barriers for people wanting to return”. It comes amid concerns that the NHS backlog after lockdown is causing more than 1,000 excess deaths per week - more than the figure now killed each week by coronavirus. A source close to Liz Truss also said: “The Covid pandemic put unprecedented strain on our NHS, and the resulting backlog is seeing people struggling to get appointments and treatments. We must act to tackle it, and we will. We will make it easier for doctors and nurses who have recently left or are planning to leave the NHS but want to return or stay to do so.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph (20 August 2022)
  15. News Article
    Nearly 700 doctors are likely to leave the Welsh NHS as a result of a recent 4.5% pay rise, the British Medical Association has warned. The warning follows a survey by BMA Cymru, in which more than half of the 1,397 respondents said they could leave and most felt morale had dropped. The below-inflation pay rise will apply to consultants, junior doctors and GPs. The Welsh government said it accepted the NHS pay review body's advice and was limited on how far it could go. Dr Iona Collins, chairwoman of the BMA's Welsh Council, said the findings resonated with what she was hearing from colleagues across Wales. "Doctors' take-home pay has reduced over several years, making the NHS an increasingly unattractive employer," said Dr Collins. Read full story Source: BBC News (23 August 2022)
  16. News Article
    A study of over 1,000 health and social care workers, conducted by Florence, the tech platform providing health & social care workers access to available shifts, found that almost a third of healthcare workers admit to feeling overwhelmed at least once a week, with 17% feeling burnt-out every day. A staggering 97% believe the cost-of-living crisis has caused further stress or burnout among healthcare professionals. It comes after more than half of healthcare workers (56%) admit to working more than 2-3 times a week over their contracted hours, with 7% working overtime every day. Not having enough staff is causing the most pressure in their role (50%), followed by low pay (39%) and high workload (35%). The study revealed nine in ten NHS and social care workers state chronic staff shortages are affecting the quality of care. Analysing this deeper, three quarters of respondents stated that the quality of care is already being ‘severely’ impacted as high vacancy rates sweep across the industry. Dr Charles Armitage, Former NHS doctor and CEO and Founder of Florence, observed: “If you’ve got fewer people there on-shift to look after people, the quality of care decreases because the people that are there are overstretched, they’re trying to do too many things and are suffering from severe burnout. As a result, mistakes are made as they’re not able to just spend as much time with people and provide that really important patient-centred care.” Read full story Source: Hospital Times, 17 August 2022
  17. News Article
    The number of midwives has fallen in every English region in the past year, figures show. Numbers dropped by around 600 on top of a longstanding shortage of more than 2000 midwives, according to analysis of NHS Digital data by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM). The RCM said more investment is needed in maternity services to ensure the safety and quality of care, as "even the smallest falls are putting increasing pressures on services already struggling with shortages, worsened by the pandemic". Dr Suzanne Tyler of the RCM said midwife numbers had "fallen significantly over the past year on top of already serious shortages" in England. Dr Tyler said: "The falls across the regions are compounding the difficulties employers are facing to recruit and keep their midwives. "We are raising these issues because we want women to get the best possible care and midwives to not only stay in the profession, but to encourage others to become one. "These figures must shock this moribund Government into action for the sake of women, babies, their families and staff." Read full story Source: Medscape, 16 August 2022
  18. News Article
    Specialist nurses at an NHS hospital have been told they may be taken off clinical shifts to help clean wards, it has emerged. Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has said it asked nursing staff to help clean wards as the hospital faced the “most challenging circumstances” it has ever faced. Clinical specialist nurses, who are advanced nurses and can usually have hundreds of patients under their care, were among those asked to spend entire shifts helping other wards “cleaning”, “tidying” and “decluttering”. The news has prompted criticism from unions, however, multiple nurses have reported that the requests happen “often” during winter. Alison Leary professor of healthcare and workforce at South Bank University warned that asking specialist nurses to drop their work was “very risky”. She said: “This problem keeps cropping up-as soon as there is pressure on wards they are expected to abandon their patients. It usually happens in winter and so it’s concerning that it has now started to happen in summer. “This also shows very little respect for nursing generally and will not help retention. Trusts need to plan workforces accordingly and should ensure they have the right amount of cleaning, administrative and housekeeping staff-all staff groups which contribute to patient safety and care quality." Read full story Source: The Independent, 8 August 2022
  19. News Article
    A large private provider says it is finding it harder than ever to fill its staffing vacancies, but is optimistic that its investment in nursing apprenticeships and overseas recruitment can help expand NHS-commissioned capacity. In an interview with HSJ, Shelley Thomas, group HR director for Spire Healthcare, said the company is facing the same staffing difficulties as NHS providers. She said: “We’re all feeling the same things at the moment… high sickness absence, high holidays, teams that are worn out. We’re all… experiencing the same from a workforce perspective.” However, she said Spire is “working harder than ever” to fill vacancies, and now has a “really robust pipeline” of apprentices and oversees recruits. Despite the waiting list backlogs which have ballooned since the pandemic began, and a £10bn framework in place for the NHS to utilise private sector capacity, analysis suggests NHS activity undertaken by private hospitals has been below pre-covid levels in almost all specialities. Ms Thomas suggested the staffing difficulties had been a factor in that, but acknowledged there were more conversations to be had locally about how the private sector could undertake more activity. She said the pandemic was a “huge catalyst for stronger working partnerships” between the NHS and the private sector and that relationships are “stronger than they’ve ever been”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 4 August 2022
  20. News Article
    The NHS in England is increasingly reliant on doctors and nurses recruited from outside the UK and EU, analysis has found. Some 34% of doctors joining the health service last year came from overseas, a rise from 18% in 2014. The government said overseas recruitment had always been part of its strategy, but unions have warned it is an unsustainable way of recruiting in the long-term. Patricia Marquis, Royal College of Nursing (RCN) director for England, said ministers must do more to reduce the "disproportionate reliance" on international recruits. The government is funding an additional 1,500 undergraduate medical school places each year for domestic students in England - a 25% increase over three years. However, last week a report by MPs concluded the large number of unfilled NHS job vacancies, about 110,000 in total, was posing a serious risk to patient safety. Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, said it was "high time for the government to commit to a fully-funded, long-term workforce plan for the NHS" to tackle "chronic workforce shortages". Read full story Source: BBC News, 5 August 2022
  21. News Article
    Midwife numbers are reaching a dangerous level which could put lives at risk, as records show more staff leaving than joining the profession for the first time in a decade. As a record number suffer burnout and leave, the figures from NHS Digital for 2021/22 show almost 300 more staff abandoned midwifery than joined the service, with 3,440 leaving and only 3,144 coming in. Analysis of the data showed a record 551 resigned in 2021 because of a lack of work-life balance. Midwives working in NHS trust maternity units typically work 12-hour shifts, but many work longer for no additional pay to cover staff shortages and to keep services running. The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) says members are "at the end of their tether' and 'physically and emotionally burnt out" Joeli Brearley, chief executive of campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed, said: "We don't have enough midwives, and those we do have are underpaid, undervalued and overworked." "This is a problem that has been communicated to the Government repeatedly for years. It is putting the lives of women and their babies in danger and causing untold damage to their mental and physical health. The Government needs to get a grip of the situation urgently before there are more tragedies." Read full story Source: Daily Mail, 1 August 2022 .
  22. News Article
    NHS leaders across England say staffing gaps and a lack of capacity in social care are putting the care and safety of patients in the NHS at risk. Almost 250 NHS leaders responding to an NHS Confederation survey say that patients are being delayed in hospital much longer than they should, with the knock-on impact resulting in higher demand on A&E departments and longer ambulance response times. More than 9 in 10 NHS leaders warn of a social care workforce crisis in their area which they expect will get worse this winter. Nearly all NHS leaders say the lack of capacity in social care is putting the care and safety of patients at risk. More than four in five warn that the absence of care packages for people to be able to return home or be moved into a care home is the main reason why medically fit patients are stuck in hospital longer than they should be. Almost all NHS leaders say that the most impactful solution would be better pay for social care staff and want the Government to increase investment in social care as a priority. An acute trust executive director in the South West accused the Government of presiding over a “national scandal.” “If the social care capacity shortfall was solved then we would not be holding ambulances at all, we would have almost no problems with elective recovery and our emergency departments would not be crowded and unsafe,” they said. Another acute trust chair in the East of England added: “The result of using nearly 20 per cent of our beds for patients who are medically fit but need packages of care to return home is an overcrowded A&E, twelve-hour trolley waits and much delayed ambulance handover times. The connection is very clear to us…Until we find a solution to social care staffing and funding, the situation can only get worse.” Commenting on the survey results Lord Victor Adebowale, chair of the NHS Confederation, said: “Decades of delay and inertia have left social care services chronically underfunded and in desperate need of more support. “NHS leaders stand alongside their sister services in social care in wanting a rescue package for the sector. They are sounding the alarm and sending a clear message to Government that the social care system has not been ‘fixed’." Read full story Source: NHS Confederation, 28 July 2022
  23. News Article
    Bullying and harassment allegations made against leaders of the organisation that supplies blood to the NHS have prompted a Care Quality Commission (CQC) review, with staff claiming poor culture has exacerbated the crisis around low blood stocks. HSJ has learned whistleblowers at NHS Blood and Transplant raised concerns with the CQC. As a result, the regulator has been carrying out a review of the organisation’s leadership. Several current and former staff, who wished to remain anonymous, told HSJ there are widespread concerns about the organisation’s culture, which they claim has enabled bullying and harassment from senior employees, including some racist behaviours. They said the culture has resulted in a significant number of staff being absent due to stress and anxiety, which alongside the latest wave of coronavirus, has contributed to an ongoing staffing crisis. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 28 July 2022
  24. News Article
    Five wards at Scotland's largest hospital had to operate with one registered nurse on duty each. Staff at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow experienced the shortage on Monday night. It is an example of the severe pressure affecting health services across the country, which has intensified due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board said nurses were supported by a number of other staff. Originally reported in the Daily Record, the shortage was described to staff in an email sent on Monday afternoon. The email said nurse staffing levels across medicine were critical, despite attempts to seek support from bank or agency workers. It said admin staff had been asked to stay on to offer support including answering phones and door buzzers for the rest of the week. As well as staffing problems, the pandemic has caused more bed blocking in Scotland's hospitals and longer waits for both emergency and outpatient treatment. Norman Provan, associate director at the Royal College of Nursing Scotland said the shortage had an impact on patient safety as well as staff wellbeing - concerns that had been raised with the health board and the Scottish government. He added: "We're in this situation largely because of the failure of Scottish government to address the nursing workforce crisis, which has seen registered nurse vacancies reach a record high. "Urgent action is needed to protect patient safety, address staff shortages and demonstrate that the nursing workforce is valued as a safety critical profession." Read full story Source: BBC News, 24 July 2022
  25. News Article
    The large number of unfilled NHS job vacancies is posing a serious risk to patient safety, a report by MPs says. It found England is now short of 12,000 hospital doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives, calling this the worst workforce crisis in NHS history. It said a reluctance to decisively plug the staffing gap could threaten plans to tackle the Covid treatment backlog. The government said the workforce is growing and NHS England is drawing up long-term plans to recruit more staff. Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who chairs the Commons health and social care select committee that produced the report, said tackling the shortage must be a "top priority" for the new prime minister when they take over in September. "Persistent understaffing in the NHS poses a serious risk to staff and patient safety, a situation compounded by the absence of a long-term plan by the government to tackle it," he said. It said conditions were "regrettably worse" in social care, with 95% of care providers struggling to hire staff and 75% finding it difficult to retain existing workers. "Without the creation of meaningful professional development structures, and better contracts with improved pay and training, social care will remain a career of limited attraction, even when it is desperately needed," the report said. Read full story Source: BBC News, 25 July 2022
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