Politicians urged to address NHS staff retention during election campaign
Politicians must use the election campaign to address the growing concerns over NHS staffing, health service bosses say.
NHS Providers says a combination of pay restraint, the impact of Brexit and the absence of a robust long-term NHS workforce strategy are taking their toll.
It claims, despite the longest and deepest financial squeeze in NHS history, trust leaders are reporting challenges in finding and keeping the right number of people with the right skills needed to deliver high quality care.
This means NHS services are having to close, the timeliness and quality of care patients receive is being adversely affected and the burden on NHS staff is becoming unsupportable, the organisation says in its policy paper.
It also highlights the gap between the demand for, and supply of, suitably trained NHS staff is growing.
NHS Providers is calling on whoever wins the June 8 General Election to work with NHS national bodies to agree and fund a long term approach to workforce planning and to consider when and how to end pay restraint.
In March this year it was announced health workers ranging from doctors, dentists, nurses and midwives to cleaners and porters will receive a 1% pay rise.
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said: “Workforce concerns are now the number one NHS priority.
“Growing problems of recruitment and retention are making it harder for trusts to ensure patient safety.”
He added that unsustainable staffing gaps were opening up in hospitals, mental health and community trusts and ambulance services.
Mr Hopson said: “Years of pay restraint and stressful working conditions are taking their toll. Pay is becoming uncompetitive.
“Significant numbers of trusts say lower paid staff are leaving to stack shelves in supermarkets rather than carry on working in the NHS.
“And we are getting consistent reports of retention problems because of working pressures in the health service causing stress and burnout.
“At the same time, trusts are reporting that the uncertainty surrounding Brexit, and the failure to reassure EU nationals about their long term future, mean that vital recruitment from EU countries is dropping rapidly.”
He added: “NHS Trusts want to see strategic solutions in place dealing with pay, the supply and demand of staff, retention and training.
“But they tell us they see no sustainable long term plans in place.”
Prime Minister Theresa May said extra funding for the NHS would only be available with a government that secured a strong economy.
She said: “It’s right that the public sector as a whole has had to play its part in dealing overall with what was left by the last Labour government, which was the worst deficit position that we have seen in our peacetime.
“In relation to NHS pay, if you look at not just the basic pay increase but also progression pay, that half of NHS staff get an annual increase of 3%-4% in their pay.
“But of course we want to see more staff and good staff in the NHS and that’s the record we’ve got as a Conservative government, more doctors, more nurses, more midwives.
“It’s because we have put the extra funding into the NHS we have been able to do that.
“You can only put extra funding into the NHS if you have a strong economy.
“Jeremy Corbyn would wreck our economy and that would be a worse position for the NHS.”
Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2017, All Rights Reserved. Picture (c) Peter Byrne / PA Wire.
