Call for younger health workers
CRISIS:
Urgent action to find a new generation of health workers is being ordered in Yorkshire to tackle a worsening staffing crisis linked to a rapidly ageing workforce.
Officials say more younger people must be recruited into the health and social care sector with more than two in five staff aged over 50.
URGENT ACTION to find a new generation of health workers is being ordered in Yorkshire to tackle a worsening staffing crisis linked to a rapidly ageing workforce.
Officials are warning more younger people must be recruited into the health and social care sector amid concerns more than two in five existing staff are aged over 50.
In a report published yesterday, health and care leaders from 28 organisations in Hull, York, North and East Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire set out a range of difficulties finding and keeping staff, which are directly leading to problems delivering key services and increasing costs.
In particular, they say a lack of new entrants aged under 25 into careers in health and social care is exacerbating worsening staff shortfalls at a time when more are nearing retirement.
More than 50,000 people work for the NHS, councils and the private care sector serving 1.4 million people in the area but shortages are growing among qualified staff to fill key roles including hospital doctors, GPs, nurses, specialist clinical staff and social workers.
Difficulties are often worse in more remote areas and others where the cost of living is higher. Officials say a major expansion is needed to tackle the problems including measures to increase the numbers of support staff and of advanced practitioners who will take on parts of roles traditionally performed by specialist staff including doctors.
The report is the first by the Humber, Coast and Vale Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP), which is set to reshape health and care services to deal with rising demand from an ageing population and cash shortfalls amid estimates of a £420m funding gap by 2021.
The area has some of the worst NHS financial problems in the country, with health bosses in the Vale of York, Scarborough and Ryedale and in North Lincolnshire among a number nationwide ordered to draw up an emergency package of cuts.
Mike Proctor, deputy chief executive of York Teaching Hospital NHS trust and chairman of STP’s workforce action board, said difficulties in staff recruitment and retention were the “root cause of many of the problems we face across health and care today” The health and care workforce needs to be strengthened. Mike Proctor, deputy chief executive of York Teaching Hospital NHS trust. and a new generation of staff was needed.
“The health and care workforce needs to be strengthened and transformed to deliver the NHS we need both now and in the future,” he said. “We need to plan with ambition and creativity to ensure we have a workforce in the right number, with the right skills, values and behaviours, at the right time and in the right place, now and in the future.”
The report said there was “an urgent need to reshape the health and social care workforce…to meet the growing demand from the communities living in the area”. Between 40 and 45 per cent of staff were aged over 50, among them a third of registered nurses including a significant number eligible to retire at 55.
It said there was a “pressing need” for a co-ordinated plan to find more support staff that went beyond traditional recruitment measures, among them a major expansion in apprenticeships in healthcare which were being increased four-fold from 150 last year to 650 planned in 2017-18.
Better career progression was also key for existing staff including an expansion in training of advanced clinical practitioners, which has seen a number already taking new roles in A&E units to address shortages of junior doctors. The report said there were “clear benefits” for patients from the changes.