NHS TO STOP INTERNATIONAL RECRUITMENT ? LATEST WORKFORCE PLAN REVEALS

The government has commissioned what we call the NHS long term workforce plan. So this was commissioned to set out a series of interventions to do three things. These are to train, to retain and to reform the whole workforce structure, to meet up with all these shortage of challenges that they are facing and all that. Honestly, the workforce plan is quite lengthy.

NHS TO STOP INTERNATIONAL RECRUITMENT ?

We want to summarise everything in this Article.This long term workforce plan is a 15 year plan. They want to use this 15 year period to train their workforce and to retain their workforce. We all know the shortage issues and to reform the whole NHS workforce structure so they can meet up with challenges over this 15 year period. So the government has pledged or is willing to fund this workforce plan with £2.4 billion.The first thing that interests most is international recruitment.

What has the NHS or the government have planned in terms of international recruitment for the NHS? So obviously, you know, people have been bashing the governments left and right that it is taking more nurses from countries and needs health care workforce most and you know, to those countries detriment. They have said in this workforce plan that they aim to reduce international recruitment in the medium to long term. Yes. So let me show the exact words.

It says that the proposals will see the NHS become less reliant on international recruitment in the medium to long term, not in the short term. So for this short period, you’re still going to recruit for the medium to long term. They aim to be less reliant and not to recruit as much international healthcare workforce.

So it says currently international staff make up almost a quarter. That’s 24% of all new joiners to the NHS every year. By 2036, 2037, it is hoped this will fall to between 9 and 10.5% a year. The NHS will always retain some level of overseas recruitment to give providers flexibility and as a source of wider and diverse talent, the NHS wrote.

They said that they would always, you know, give overseas applicants the chance because they like the diversity in the talent. However, at present number of foreigners joining the NHS annually is about 24%. However, they want to reduce this to as low as 9 to 10.5% in the next few years to come. And they said this is their medium to long term growth, not short term. So this is the major thing when it comes to international recruitment. What this means also is that in the short term, they’re still going to be massive recruitment because they plan to have an extra 60,000 doctors, 170,000 more nurses and 71,000 more allied health professionals in place by 2036, 2067. And they’re not going to get all these people from the UK.
The UK nurses in training in all the UK schools will not make up this 170,000. So they’ll still, in the short term, be heavily dependent on foreign strangeness. So that is that what in terms of international recruitment? So that’s what I know that most people will be interested in.
The other things are double the medical school places to 15,000 a year. So they want to increase the number of medical doctors in the NHS. You know, still this whole shortage. So now the number of let’s say if Oxford could only take 500 medical students each year, now they want to double it. So in a year they want to have as much as 15,000 medical school places in a year. So that means previously it was about 7500 medical school places per year. So they are doubling the places.

Another thing is they want to increase GP training places by 50%. So they want more doctors to enter primary care sector. So they are also going to increase the number of doctors that they train as GP’s.And for that one they actually gave a date. They said that they want to increase the number of GP training places by 50%. That’s 2000 more, 6000 by 2031. So to ensure more newly change doctors into primary care, first 500 new places will be available from September 2025.

Another major thing that they mentioned is to double nurse and midwife training to 24,000 a year. By 2031, they aim to double the number of adult nurse training places, with around 24,000 more nurse and midwife training places by year 2031. Within this, they also want to train over 5000 more mental and learning disability nurses every single year. So that’s another thing is they want 1 in 5 clinical staff trained through apprenticeships. so the NHS will be training a lot of medical staff through apprenticeships like maybe Nurse associates, apprenticeship programs, etcetera. And then it says 2000 people will be awarded medical degrees through apprenticeships and then a fivefold rise in assistant roles such as Nest, Associate and all that. So they want to increase the number of the assistant roles that position Associate Nurse Associates roles. They also want to work very closely with the General Medical Council to move from a 5 to 4 year undergraduate degree program and will pilot medical internship programs for newly qualified doctors. So this will shorten the undergraduate training time.
So that medical school program was a five year and averted program, but now they are reducing it to four. So they said they would work with the professions and regulators to reform the training so that students have better experience of learning that prepares them to work in a more the NHS, however you use a shorter period.All the great degrees must prepare doctors or nurses to meet the outcomes of graduate sets by the relevant professional regulator. They are also introducing a medical licensing assessment which will ensure medical students meet a common threshold for safe medical practice in the UK by providing assurance to patients and the public. So with the funding, again it is £2.4 billion over the next five years to fund additional education and training places. And this is on top of an existing increase to education and training investment that they have already done, reaching a record of £6.1 billion over the next two years.

And they wish to review this workforce plan every two years and then also increase the NHS workforce by 300,000 by the year 2067 and also expand the dentistry training places by 40%. Okay. And then they also wish to use new technology like artificial intelligence, etcetera, and robotics. And also plan to back this whole project by £2.4 billion over the next five years.It’s in three parts.
They want to train,
they want to retain and
they want to reform.
So to train, they are increasing the number of training places so that more people can get into the schools and more people can graduate as doctors and nurses and other allied health professionals to join the workforce and then train a lot of apprentice doctors, nurses, associates, etcetera, so that they can, you know, quickly get the skills and the knowledge that they need to be able to join their NHS.
To reduce the shortage. And with retaining, they’ve also promised that they are going to make it easy for people that have retired to come back easily and then join or reduce the number of people that are retiring by giving them a very flexible shift. And then for those that are working parents, people that have children as well, make it very easy for them or very flexible for them to take so that they will be able to keep them all and also provide training so that people will get the required and that that they need to be able to work efficiently to reform as well as they want to change the way we work.
By developing the technology sector, working will be much easier. They want to use more robotics and more technology to make the work easier for all of us. So that is basically the main things that they are looking at in this 15 year long term workforce plan.

NHS Long-Term Workforce Plan

The first comprehensive workforce plan for the NHS, putting staffing on a sustainable footing and improving patient care. It focuses on retaining existing talent and making the best use of new technology alongside the biggest recruitment drive in health service history.
VIEW NHS WORKFORCE PLAN: https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/nhs-long-term-workforce-plan/

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