Health and social care face biggest staffing crisis in their history
HEALTH and social care face the ‘greatest workforce crisis in their history’ with staff shortages creating a ‘serious risk to patient safety’, a damning report has warned.
hospitals in england are now short of 12,000 doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives, the Commons health and social care committee’s report revealed.
projections suggest an extra 475,000 jobs will be needed in health and 490,000 more in social care, almost one million in total, by early next decade.
Maternity services are under ‘unsustainable pressure’ while the number of full-time Gps has fallen by more than 700 over the last three years, the report showed. The situation is worse in social care, as a third of workers left their jobs between 2020 and 2021.
The committee, led by Tory Mp Jeremy hunt, says the Government has no credible strategy to improve the situation while demand grows.
health chiefs say frequent vacancies are leaving staff ‘disillusioned, overworked and at high risk of burn-out’ and the findings should ‘shock ministers into action’.
The report said of the projected jobs shortfall: ‘The Government has shown a marked reluctance to act decisively.
‘The workforce plan promised in the spring has not yet been published and will be a “framework” with no numbers, which we are told could potentially follow in yet another report later this year.’ Mps said while some progress has been made towards a target of recruiting 50,000 nurses, the Government is set to miss the Tory manifesto pledge of 6,000 more Gps.
They said: ‘ The persistent understaffing of the NHS now poses a serious risk to staff and patient safety both for routine and emergency care.
‘It also costs more as patients present later with more serious illness. But most depressing for many on the front line is the absence of any credible strategy to address it,’ they said.
The report said the NHS loses millions of full-time equivalent days to staff sickness caused by anxiety, stress and depression. ‘The result is that many in an exhausted workforce are considering leaving – and if they do pressure will increase still further on their colleagues,’ it added.
A separate report by the committee’s panel of independent experts rates the Government’s progress to meet key commitments it has made on workforce as ‘ inadequate’. Mr hunt said: ‘We now face the greatest workforce crisis in history in the NHS and in social care with still no idea of the number of additional doctors, nurses and other professionals we actually need.
‘NHS professionals know there is no silver bullet to solve this problem but we should at least be giving them comfort that a plan is in place.’ The report said almost every part of the NHS was suffering staff shortages. It said 552 midwives left in the last year, showing a ‘clear problem with midwifery retention’.
Mps criticised the Government and NHS england for not setting out when safe staffing in maternity would be reached, a failure they said was ‘absolutely unacceptable’. Danny Mortimer, of NHS employers which represents workforce leaders, said tens of thousands of vacancies ‘and an exhausted workforce present one of the greatest challenges to the recovery of the economy and the return of safe, high-quality health services for all’. ‘It is time for a reality reset on the NHS’, he added.
Patricia Marquis, of the royal College of Nursing, said: ‘That persistent understaffing in all care settings poses a serious risk to staff and patient safety should shock ministers into action.’
A Department of health and Social Care spokesman said: ‘We are growing the health and social care workforce, with over 4,000 more doctors, and 9,600 more nurses compared to last year, and over 1,400 more doctors in general practice compared to March 2019.’
It is a great paradox. Defenders of the NhS, including politicians of all parties, tell us it offers unsurpassed service. Yet they also routinely tell us that it is falling apart.
Waiting lists are simply dreadful. You might see a GP over Zoom if you’re fortunate. Maternity services are creaking. and, as a report by MPs claims today, a staffing crisis is putting patient safety at risk.
Labour shriek that the Government is starving the NhS of cash, yet successive tory prime ministers have poured in record sums. Despite this, it is still seemingly better at killing off patients than the health services of comparable countries.
how can this be? the truth is, too often extra funding is not invested in more doctors and nurses or clearing backlogs, but spent on pumping up managers’ pay cheques and hiring clipboard- wielding ‘diversity’ coordinators. the concept of eliminating waste and inefficiency seems alien to it.
Instead of treating the NhS with uncritical veneration, we urgently need an open discussion on how to radically reform this increasingly unpopular, socialist monolith.