The NHS in England has no chance of training enough GPs and nurses to solve the shortages it faces.
A report predicts that in the next five years nurse shortages will double and GPs gaps nearly treble. The Nuffield Trust, Health Foundation and King’s Fund all say a combination of international recruitment, student grants and innovation is needed. The government is insisting plans are in place to recruit more staff.
The report recommends that a £5,200 grant for living expenses to nurses in training and they need to bring 5,000 more student onto nursing courses every year. The NHS is expected to set out a plan to help the staff crisis next month.
It is already known that NHS is short staffed, current figures suggest there are more than 30,000 extra nurses needed and almost 3,000 GPs. Current trends will rise to nearly 70,000 nurses and more than 7,000 GPs needed in the next five years.
Anita Charlesworth, director of research and economics at the Health Foundation, said: “The NHS doesn’t have enough nurses today and without action this problem is going to get significantly worse over the coming years.
“The workforce is the make or break issue for the health service and unless staffing shortages are substantially reduced the recent NHS long-term plan can only be a wish list.”
Dido Harding, chair of NHS Improvement, said: “I welcome this report which will help inform the development of our workforce implementation plan, the interim plan for which we expect to publish in April.”
Changes the report recommends the NHS do are:
- “Ethically recruiting” 5,000 extra nurses a year from abroad.
- Exempting all healthcare staff from the government’s proposed £30,000 minimum salary for those wanting to come and work in the UK after Brexit.
- Giving student nurses in England £5,200-a-year maintenance grants to help compensate for the abolition of nursing bursaries in 2016, which has led to a 4% fall in the number of applicants for nursing degrees.
- The NHS doing more to help staff maintain a healthy work-life balance, for example through greater access to part-time working.
- Ensuring that NHS staff receive inflation-proof salary rises and no longer freezing their pay.
- Closing the existing gender and ethnic pay gaps among NHS staff.
- Spending £900m a year more on training and developing NHS staff by 2023-24.
