NHS workforce plan
Thousands of doctors, nurses, dentists and other healthcare staff will be trained in England every year as part of the first ever Long Term Workforce Plan published by the NHS and backed by the Government today.
Read the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan.
Our view
The NHS plan makes welcome commitments to significantly expanding training places for doctors and nurses. In line with our past recommendations, it also commits to investing in flexibility for staff roles and further investment in non-GP roles in primary care, including through an additional 15,000 staff members to be recruited through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme.
However, even if the plan delivers on its commitments around training places, we will not see this translate to a growth in the workforce until the end of the decade.
Better retention of existing staff will be crucial in the coming year, yet the plan contains very few concrete commitments which could lead to that.
The plan was commissioned and accepted by the Government, which has backed the plan with over £2.4 billion to fund additional education and training places over five years on top of existing funding commitments. However, it is still not clear how it will fund this investment.
Responding, our CEO Louise Ansari said:
"People will welcome the long-awaited Government commitment to training more doctors and nurses.
"All too often, we hear stories of people whose care is delayed, cancelled, or postponed, putting many in danger, due to severe staffing gaps across health and care services.
"The much-needed funding and resource for the NHS workforce will be essential to underpin NHS recovery in the longer term.
"It is also positive to see the plan invest in technology to support innovative training methods and freeing up capacity for clinical staff.
"As the plan acknowledges, training additional staff will take time. To address the challenges facing health and care services here and now, the NHS should continue to invest in training admin staff and care navigators to improve patient experience.
"We welcome the commitment to review the plan every two years and urge the government to ensure that this process includes an assessment of whether patients feel their access to care is improving."
"We were one of the many organisations that called for the workforce plan in various speaking engagements and in our advice to the Department of Health and Social Care on the NHS mandate."
