Yet another NHS Workforce planning shambles

New NHS figures reveal that there are 5,000 newly qualified nurses who are unable to get a job.  It is also reported that more than 20,000 jobs have been cut in recent years as managers struggle to bring NHS finances back into balance.  Yet only a few years ago there was such a critical shortage of nurses, the NHS were flying them in from all over the world.  So what an earth has happened?  Well, a health department spokesman said yesterday: "Low vacancy rates confirm the NHS is no longer burdened by the staff shortages of the past."  But that hardly answers the question, nor does it even tell the entire truth. 

In a desperate attempt to balance the books over the past year or two, the NHS has seen its easiest way to make savings is to lay off staff.  Unfortunately, this is neither sustainable nor particularly sensible.  The best way the NHS could make savings is with its procurement.  For a start, it should stop wasting billions of pounds on pointless IT upgrades and new hospitals that aren't actually needed.  If it does feel it necessary to lay off the thousands of staff ahead of making more prudent and sensible savings, why have they wasted millions in training them up in the first place?  The farce is set to continue with the admission that experts are predicting shortages again in the medium to long-term because large numbers of nurses, GPs and consultants are nearing retirement age.  So we will have a load of trained up nurses who will either leave the country or pursue other careers, then there will a shortage but no sane person will bother training up to be a nurse because of the contempt the NHS shows their trainees.  The cycle continues.