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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

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Upcoming Events

Central Sterilising Club - Annual Scientific Meeting 2024

Crowne Plaza at Gerrard’s Cross
15th April 2024 – 16th April 2024

DECON UK 2024

National Conference Centre, Birmingham
17th April 2024

Infection Prevention & Control

National Conference Centre, Birmingham
23rd - 24th April 2024

Theatres & Decontamination Conference 2024

Coventry Building Society Arena
16th May 2024

The AfPP Roadshow - Birmingham

Millennium Point, Birmingham
18th May 2024

The AfPP Roadshow - Exeter

University of Exeter
22nd June 2024

Access the latest issue of Clinical Services Journal on your mobile device together with an archive of back issues.

Download the FREE Clinical Services Journal app from your device's App store

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