Displaying items by tag: staff shortages

NHS bosses have told political parties not to impose any new targets on the beleaguered health service in their bid to win the next general election. They said the Conservatives and opposition parties should resist foisting new performance metrics on the NHS when it cannot deliver the hundreds it already operates under. The plea was made by hospitals, ambulance providers, mental health, community care and GP services in England, who said, ‘Given the NHS’s staff shortages, huge backlog of care and financial problems, the answer will not be found in politicians imposing oversimplified and unfunded targets that make convenient soundbites but have little bearing on reality and demoralise frontline workers.’

An MP social care report said the large number of NHS job vacancies is a serious risk to staff and patient safety. England needs 12,000 more hospital doctors (it takes six years to train one) and 50,000+ nurses and midwives, in the worst-ever NHS workforce crisis. Current projections estimate a million new jobs will need to be filled in health and social care by the early part of the next decade. Extra staff will be needed to keep up with rising demands as the population gets older and healthcare becomes more complex and technologically advanced. The situation is compounded by the absence of a long-term plan by the Government to tackle it. 28% of staff experienced at least one incident of bullying or abuse in the past year. Sajid Javid said the Government was not on track to deliver its manifesto commitment to increase GPs in England by 6,000, and NHS pensions arrangements allow senior doctors to retire or reduce their hours and become better-off.

Patricia Marquis, of the Royal College of Nursing, said the NHS was clearly ‘struggling to treat patients safely’. NHS medical director Prof Stephen Powis said the Omicron variant was putting huge pressures on hospitals, not just because of the numbers of patients being admitted - about 2,000 a day on average - but also because of staff absences. But he added, ‘Despite this, once again, NHS staff pulled out all the stops to keep services going for patients’. Pray for the Government to find a way to meet the financial needs of the NHS so that the six million people on waiting lists for routine operations and care can have their procedures. In December nearly 27% of patients arriving at emergency departments waited over four hours. Demand for ambulances is high, with crews struggling to reach patients within the seven-minute target.