Yesterday the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) launched a report revealing that there are nearly 20,000 nursing vacancies currently unfilled in England.
The report also highlights a 15% cut in the number of nursing student places commissioned since 2010-11, and forecasts a shortage of 47,000 registered nurses by 2016. The King’s Fund also estimated that there will be a potential shortfall of between 40,000 and 100,000 nurses by 2021, as part of its Time to Think Differently project.
The RCN and UNISON have previously highlighted how staff shortages mean that nurses feel they do not have enough time to spend with dying patients, reassuring their fears and explaining treatments and diagnosis. They have been campaigning for the government to introduce minimum staffing levels (as recommended by the inquiry into failures at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust) to ensure safe and compassionate care.
Calling for the new report to be a “wake-up call” to the scale of nurse shortages in the NHS, Dr Peter Carter, chief executive and general secretary of the RCN, said: “We sit on the verge of a hidden workforce crisis that desperately needs addressing to ensure the NHS runs properly and patients get the care they deserve.”
On Monday, the World Health Organization warned of a growing world-wide shortage of healthcare workers due to an increase in demand, an aging health workforce and a lack of young people entering the profession.
An increase in demand for services and an older workforce that is nearing retirement were also concerns raised earlier this year by Help the Hospices Commission into the Future of Hospice Care.
Recommendations from the Commission warned that rising demand across the health and social care system will lead to an increase in competition for professionals, meaning hospices must think about how best to attract and retain the staff (and volunteers) they need now and in the future as demands for hospice services increase and change.
Due to these changing demands (as the population ages and finds itself living with multiple long-term health problems) and changes in how health and social care are delivered, the Commission also suggests that the skills and make-up of the hospice workforce will need be different in the future.
The Commission worked with Skills for Health to help define the roles and skills that will be needed by hospices in the future. This report can be downloaded from Help the Hospices website, along with two further reports specifically on the roles of clinical nurse specialist and doctors in the future.
The Commission was set up two years ago by Help the Hospices to explore the challenges and opportunities that hospices in the UK would face over the next 10 to 15 years, and to make recommendations on how they should prepare for these. Last month the Commission published a number of reports, outlining a range of actions that hospices should take over the next two to three years to prepare for the opportunities and challenges they will likely face in the future.
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