NHS Staffing

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The NHS is chronically short of staff.  All staff providing patient care take long periods to train, ranging from a few years for nurses, radiographers, physiotherapists and other specialist professions to about ten years for a general practitioner and fifteen years for a consultant.

Government policy already provides for training more people, and for providing extra training for existing staff such as nurses and radiographers to enable them to perform tasks which were previously reserved to doctors.  This is a continuation of an existing trend.  For example at my local hospital in 1993 intravenous chemotherapy was invariably administered by doctors, but by 2003 it was routinely administered by specially trained nurses.

As a short term expedient the Government is bringing in foreign companies to perform routine operations with staff from abroad, and patients are being sent abroad.  Despite some Government discouragement, staff are recruited from abroad, including some of the countries with least resourced health services.

Some Government policies may prevent effective use of existing or potential staff.

• Aggressive management misuses suspension for allegations which if proven would be unlikely to lead to dismissal.  Sometimes  allegations are not investigated with any urgency.  The Government needs to reduce the number and duration of suspensions by monitoring and making employing bodies accountable.
• At least some medically qualified asylum seekers are prevented from using their skills.  Even if further training is needed their skills should be brought into use as soon as possible.
• The Government has announced that nursing students will not have to pay university top-up fees.  The same exemption will not apply to medical students.  As top-up fees will not be repayable by people while they are working abroad or more than 25 years after they were incurred, the policy for top-up fees will be a perverse incentive for doctors trained in Britain to work abroad for long periods.  Their skills will be lost to the NHS.

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Sheila Porter-Williams
Campaign for Health Service Democracy
Green Haven, Halfway Lane
Dunchurch
Rugby, Warwickshire CV22 6RD
sheilaCHSD@porter-williams.freeserve.co.uk