As the NHS celebrates its 73rd birthday, the Royal College of Physicians has warned of a worsening staff shortage.
Latest survey results show that more than a quarter of senior consultant physicians expect to retire within three years, many within 18 months, while the majority of trainees entering the NHS (56 per cent) are interested in working part-time.
A fifth of doctors already work part-time, and the new figures from the RCP suggest this trend is set to increase as wider expectations around work/life balance change.
The RCP is calling on new Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid to give the NHS the best birthday present it could ask for – more capacity. It wants a doubling of medical school places to avoid medical staff shortages worsening in the future, with increased funding for social care and action to address health inequalities also needed to reduce demands upon the NHS.
According to the RCP’s survey, 43 per cent of doctors have not reverted to their original working pattern, with well over half of respondents (57 per cent) now working from home at least some of the time. Over two thirds (67 per cent) said working from home has improved their work/life balance.
The responses also show that doctors would like this shift to more remote working during the pandemic to become the norm. More than 60 per cent want opportunities for remote IT access, online meetings and remote working to be available in the future.
The key challenge stymieing more flexible working patterns is not the willingness of NHS trusts, but a lack of workforce, with 79 per cent of those expecting flexible working to be difficult citing ‘not enough medical staff’. While 59 per cent of doctors thought their department would support a request to work more flexibly, 41 per cent didn’t think so, with more than three quarters citing not enough medical staff as the reason.
Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “It is right that we should celebrate the achievements of healthcare staff during the pandemic as we mark the NHS’s birthday, but the pressures we have faced have been greater than they needed to be because of existing staffing shortages. If we do not address this problem we will have much less to celebrate in future.
“Caring commitments and health reasons will be key drivers behind part-time working, but we have to view this as part of a wider cultural shift. If a majority of trainees coming into the system are keen to work part-time, we need to find a way to make that happen to keep attracting people into the profession and retaining them. The NHS has recognised that and wants to offer flexible working – but it is stuck in a true Catch-22 situation where it cannot do the very thing needed to attract more staff because it doesn’t have enough staff at the moment.
“Meeting the complex needs of an ageing population, let alone another pandemic, will be all but impossible if we do not expand medical school places now to train more doctors, invest in social care and address the inequalities that create and worsen ill-health.”
