A number of leading health organisations have urged the Prime Minister to shore up NHS staff numbers, and head off a haemorrhaging of doctors, nurses and other frontline health workers.
The NHS Confederation, NHS Providers, the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing, the Academy of Royal Medical Colleges and Unison have penned a joint letter to the Prime Minister warning of the ‘very real risk’ that if NHS staff leave a vicious circle will be created where ‘staff vacancies are the greatest threat to the retention of NHS staff’.
Collectively representing most of the NHS workforce and the organisations who employ them, the six organisations are calling on the government to take rapid and speedy ‘action to address the chronic undersupply of NHS staff’, highlighting the ‘compelling case for investment which starts to deliver sustained and impactful increases to workforce numbers by the end of this Parliament.’
The organisations also call on the government to clearly outline the workforce requirements for delivering the NHS Long Term Plan across different parts of the country, as well to set out the areas of both ‘greatest risk and greatest need’ across the NHS workforce to effectively deliver services to patients and more transparency on which staff groups need to be bolstered.
They say additional investment in workforce capacity is imperative to tackling the huge and ballooning elective care backlog – which currently stands at 4.7 million – as well as enabling the NHS to deliver on its commitments to patients as set out in the NHS Long Term Plan. Additionally, extra funding is needed to ensure staff can deliver and do more for patients as well as covering the additional workforce costs created by the fall-out from coronavirus, including a national programme of rolling vaccinations and the growing demand for support and treatment for patients with long Covid.
Danny Mortimer, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “We desperately need the government to give the people working in the NHS hope that the gaps in their teams will be filled in the longer term. It is deeply worrying that far too many NHS staff feel that they are unable to do their job properly because they simply do not have enough colleagues to support them. This, combined with the working conditions they have found themselves under during the pandemic, as well as the pressing need to tackle both the long-term impact of the pandemic on people’s physical and mental health and waiting times, means staff the NHS and its people cannot meet the needs of their patients and that we start to see a haemorrhaging of our staff. In terms of staffing numbers, the NHS did not go into the pandemic match fit and this fact has been thrown into even greater relief by the experience of our workforce over the past twelve months.”
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said: “NHS staff have delivered for patients this past year. The government now needs to deliver for NHS staff by addressing longstanding workforce shortages. We must see a fully costed and funded national workforce plan, so we stop asking NHS frontline staff to bear an unsustainable workload shift after shift, week after week.
“The plan can’t just cover existing workforce gaps. It must set out the level of staffing needed to make the NHS a great place to work. Currently, the NHS cannot consistently give its staff a reasonable workload and the work life balance they need and deserve. That has to change.”
