Managing the challenges of workforce planning

There are some difficult areas too, which provide specific challenges for the planners, for example general practice has a high number of potential retirees in the next few years and the numbers of replacement numbers throughout the UK seem to be lacking. Mental health and maternity services are also pinch points as well as the difficulties of skill mix in nursing where people are hospital trained largely, but need to have community based skills if we are to achieve the Five Year Forward View aspects of moving services closer to home. 

Future care models and the sustainability and transformation plans (STPs) are stimulating the need for a system which is more flexible and responsive to change. There is a strong need to meet the need clinically, financially and locally rather than relying on foreign trained professionals as has happened in the past. With the complexity of the NHS and all the different professional demands, the planning of workforce numbers and skills to ensure that they are in the right place at the right time in future, is full of possible problems. As a recognition of this, the Migration Advisory Committee has during the last year put nursing onto the shortage occupation list – this is usually a last resort action, and when reporting this the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) identified that the current shortage is mostly down to factors which could and should have been anticipated by the health, care and independent sectors. These issues include an ageing population, problems with staff training, pay and recruitment, compounded by a squeeze on budgets.3

Workforce planning