Wednesday 25 February 2015

Future of the NHS workforce: from nail cutters to doctors' assistants

Future of the NHS workforce: from nail cutters to doctors' assistants

UK health service may be one of the world’s biggest employers, but it must adapt to keep pace with the future patient demographic

The NHS employs about 1.6 million people, which puts it on to the list of the world’s top five biggest employers, rubbing shoulders with the US Department of Defence and China’s People’s Liberation Army. In England alone the NHS has 1.3 million staff working in 300 different roles on the payroll of 1,000 different employers. That 1.3 million includes 111,000 hospital doctors, 356,000 nurses, midwives and health visitors, 37,000 managers, 40,000 GPs and a clinical support workforce of 359,000, according to the Health and Social Care Information Centre.

The figures illustrate the challenges the NHS faces in keeping the right number of people with the right skills in the right place to deliver today’s services. But they also highlight the scale of those challenges to ensure that the workforce keeps pace with the future patient demographic, such as an increasing older population, and developments in clinical practice and science, like genomics, which have the potential to revolutionise the way healthcare is delivered. Continue reading... The Guardian

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