Hugo Swire – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Hugo Swire on 2016-10-07.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to increase the number of (a) doctors and (b) nurses recruited by the NHS.
Mr Philip Dunne
The responsibility for recruitment and staffing rests with National Health Service organisations as they are best placed to ensure they have the right staff, in the right place, at the right time to provide safe and effective care for their patients.
On 4 October 2016 the Secretary of State for Health announced that from September 2018, the Government will fund up to 1,500 additional undergraduate medical places through university medical schools each year.
In November 2015 reforms to nursing, midwifery and allied health pre-registration training was announced, the reforms aim to increase the number of training places by up to 10,000 by the end of the Parliament.
As outlined in its Workforce Plan for 2016-17, Health Education England has increased the overall volume of education and training with, in excess of, 38,000 new training places in 2016-17 for nurses, scientists, and therapists, and there are now over 50,000 doctors and dentists currently in training.
The latest workforce statistics published by NHS Digital for June 2016 show that since May 2010, there are now almost 22,700 more professionally qualified clinical staff working in NHS trusts and clinical commissioning groups, including over 8,500 more doctors and 4,600 more nurses and midwives.
