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.

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    workforce issues and makes recommendations about necessary changes and their implementation. 24. The present planning arrangements have been subject to some criticism. The NHS Confederation acknowledged that there needed to be “integration between medical and non-medical workforce planning and the other aspects of [the] system that do not work so effectively should be reviewed.””” It believed that: “systems for identifying future requirements do not currently look across all healthcare professions, but work in a fragmented manner”” and that “workforce planning would be improved by streamlining the current complexity of mechanisms and systems, in particular integrating medical and non-medical healthcare professionals within healthcare workforce planning against current and future service delivery needs.””* 25. The King’s Fund recognised the need for increased staff flexibility in terms of the roles performed, but identified obstacles to such a development. It believed that growth in clinical care and increased specialisation reduced flexibility by creating the need for additional training whilst making it difficult, if not impossible to switch specialties in mid-career.” The King’s Fund also drew attention to the impact of professional barriers which, it argued, inhibited progress towards a more integrated approach to planning. “Flexibility is further reduced by deep-seated institutional factors within the NHS workforce, particularly its division into different professions, between which there is very little movement. Furthermore the Service has largely worked with the specific ‘skill bundles’ that have emerged from the professions themselves and these in turn have not been devised with flexibility in mind nor indeed with the needs of the Service. As a result, roles and training programmes cutting across existing professional boundaries have proved very hard to develop.””° 26. Mr Bob Abberley, Head of Health at UNISON told the Committee that: “workforce planning needs to be across the workforce as a whole, and involving all organisations delivering care ... The problem is the NHS is compartmentalised...”” we have to have a training and qualification system which allows people to move up through from virtually the cleaner to the doctor.” 27. Miss Christine Hancock, General Secretary of the RCN considered that the Government had not got the figures right: ‘because I do not think they know where they come from, and workforce information, workforce planning...is incredibly poor in the Health Service.” Mr Roger Kline of MSF suggested that: “if you do not employ [staff] in the right numbers and with the right training, it actually costs the Health Service lots and lots of money.” 28. The Royal College of General Practitioners believed that LMWAGs and consortia were taking time to work together with health authorities and Trusts*' and the RCN thought that greater dialogue was needed between consortia and universities. Education consortia are still relatively 2 Ey. pl6l. °? Ibid, para 2.7. v Ibid, para 6.3. °> Appendix 68. @ Ibid. See also Ev. p108, para 66; Q118; Ev. p74 ; Appendix 67, para 6.5 %9Q 214. Appendix 15.