Future NHS staffing requirements : third report / Health Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Health Committee.
Date:
1999
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Future NHS staffing requirements : third report / Health Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/52 (page 11)
    THIRD REPORT The Health Committee has agreed to the following Report:— FUTURE NHS STAFFING REQUIREMENTS Introduction 1. The NHS is in the midst of a staffing crisis. One academic has described nursing shortages' as being of a cyclical nature, but this particular shortage appears to be much worse than those of the past. Most groups of staff are in short supply. 2. In 1997 and 1998 the Department of Health (DoH) introduced a number of policy initiatives and proposals intended to modernise the NHS, improve standards for patients and tackle perceived staffing difficulties.” Following the 1998 Comprehensive Spending Review the NHS in England was allocated an extra £18 billion over the ensuing three years. This figure included £50 million devoted to tackling nursing shortages in the NHS. The written evidence we received described serious staffing problems faced by the NHS, but gave broad support to the Government’s approach to dealing with them. 3. The Government’s plans for the NHS are ambitious and comprehensive. But we felt it important, particularly in the light of current serious staff shortages and the factors underlying them, to test the robustness of the staffing projections underpinning the proposed reforms. UNISON suggested that whilst the Government intended to create 15,000 more posts and 6-7,000 more training places for nurses, and to increase the annual intake of medical students by 1,000 these measures would not alleviate understaffing since they would be: “Largely consumed by the expansion in NHS services also announced in the [Comprehensive Spending] Review, and will take some time to feed through.” 4. There is also a worrying uncertainty surrounding the ability of the NHS to recruit the increased numbers of nurses and trainee nurses currently proposed by the Government. The Director of Human Resources at the National Health Service Executive (NHSE): felt that, the recruitment of more doctors would be relatively straightforward, but increasing the overall number of nurses in the NHS by up to 15,000 over three years represented a “substantial task”’.* 5. We decided to undertake this inquiry with a view to testing the staffing assumptions being made, assessing recruitment and retention strategies and where necessary making recommendations designed to help the Government to fulfill its intentions. 6. During the course of our investigation we received over 100 memoranda. These attributed staffing problems in the NHS to poor conditions of service, poor career structures, low morale, low status, heavy workloads, a lack of employment security, stress, bad management, the absence of flexible, family-friendly working conditions, violence and harassment and - most insistently - inadequate pay. In a memorandum to us a nurse explained why, after 19 years service, she was leaving the NHS. She cited “all the changes”, “harder work loads”, “more demanding patients and employers”, and “of course poor pay” as her main reasons for going and concluded: “T will be sad to leave but feel that for my future financial and professional well being the NHS is not a healthy place to be.” 7. Our programme of oral evidence included contributions from DoH officials, the Chairman of the Medical Workforce Standing Advisory Committee, staff representative groups, the NHS Confederation, representatives of local education consortia, and the Secretary of State for Health. A list of all those who gave written and oral evidence is on pages iv to x. ' Your Country Needs You by James Buchan, Health Service Journal, 16 July 1998. The Green Paper, Our Healthier Nation; The NHS White Paper, The New NHS; A First Class Service - Quality in the new NHS; The new Human Resources Framework, Working Together - Securing a quality workforce for the NHS. 3 Ey. p104, para 32. 4 Q50.