Hard-working staff are the bedrock of the NHS.
“By improving culture, leadership and wellbeing, we will ensure up to 130,000 fewer staff leave the NHS over the next 15 years”
Published in June 2023 and updated on 24th July 2023, the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan reports that:
"If the NHS is to continue to be the health service the public overwhelmingly wants and are proud of – one which provides high quality care for patients, free at the point of need – it needs a robust and effective plan to ensure we have the right number of people, with the right skills and support in place to be able to deliver the kind of care people need."
"The publication of our NHS Long Term Workforce Plan is therefore one of the most seminal moments in our 75-year history. This is the first time the government has asked the NHS to come up with a comprehensive workforce plan; a once-in-a-generation opportunity to put staffing on a sustainable footing and improve patient care."
Priority areas include:
- Train: significantly increasing education and training to record levels, as well as increasing apprenticeships and alternative routes into professional roles, to deliver more doctors and dentists, more nurses and midwives, and more of other professional groups, including new roles designed to better meet the changing needs of patients and support the ongoing transformation of care.
- Retain: ensuring that we keep more of the staff we have within the health service by better supporting people throughout their careers, boosting the flexibilities we offer our staff to work in ways that suit them and work for patients, and continuing to improve the culture and leadership across NHS organisations.
- Reform: improving productivity by working and training in different ways, building broader teams with flexible skills, changing education and training to deliver more staff in roles and services where they are needed most, and ensuring staff have the right skills to take advantage of new technology that frees up clinicians’ time to care, increases flexibility in deployment, and provides the care patients need more effectively and efficiently.