While the headcount of GPs has risen by 1,385 (as at June this year) since the 2019 general election, the number of full-time, fully qualified GPs has actually decreased by 105. As alluded to above, ambitions for staffing are undermined by a lack of understanding of what is supposed to be measured – making it more challenging to hold the government to account. The government also committed to increasing the number of GPs by 6,000 by 2025. Is progress being made against the ambition to have 6,000 more GPs by 2025? But Covid-19 has posed some unique challenges, namely heightened burnout of existing staff, as well as an increasingly competitive global market for nurses. Third, there have been atypical recruitment and retention practices during the pandemic, where students/trainees and recently retired NHS staff have been asked to rally together to face the multiple waves of Covid-19 that have swamped the health service. In particular, the number of learning disability nurses has fallen by 4.1% since December 2019. Second, the picture is more varied when looking within specific types of nursing. The closest increase to 50,000 more nurses over five years was between 20 (an increase of 46,500), which corresponded to a major investment in and expansion of NHS staff. However, we would caution against complacency.įirst, there is no precedent for such a sustained increase in the number of nurses since records began – an annual increase of 10,000 more nurses has only been achieved four times in 62 years (see chart). Noting the potential effect of seasonality when comparing data between different months, on the face of it this appears to be the right level of growth needed to achieve the 50,000 target.
In any case, as of June this year the number of full-time equivalent nurses based in hospital and community health settings had increased by 14,158 since December 2019. For instance, it is unclear whether the 50,000 target refers to full-time equivalents or simply a count of the number of nurses. Is the NHS on course to have 50,000 more nurses by 2025?Īs with many similar commitments, there are limited details available to explain how the government proposes to measure or monitor its flagship ambition to recruit 50,000 more nurses by 2025 – a target that was reaffirmed in this week’s Spending Review. Drawing on our NHS staffing tracker, we cast a light on progress against workforce targets at large. In this blog, we take stock of performance against two of the headline commitments in the government’s 2019 manifesto: on the number of nurses in the health service, and then on the number of GPs. Covid-19 has subsequently shifted these goalposts, with the need for additional staff to help clear waiting lists and take pressure off existing staff more prominent than ever – increasing the level of scrutiny typically afforded for government ambitions. In 2019, this government set some ambitious goals for the NHS workforce, recognising the long-standing staffing shortages.
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