David Oliver: The risk assessment for NHS England’s long term workforce plan should worry doctors

In June 2023 NHS England (NHSE) published its long awaited and serially delayed long term workforce plan for the NHS.1 In the 10 months since then we’ve seen pay disputes, difficult contract negotiations, strike action, and ballots of clinical staff.234 While the BMA’s Consultants Committee has now settled a long running contract dispute with the government,5 its Junior Doctors Committee seems no closer to a negotiated settlement.6 We continue to face serious problems with workforce retention and morale, as well as staffing and rota gaps across a range of clinical disciplines—in nursing even more so than medicine.7Last month the BMA published a paper on “tackling medical attrition,”8 estimating that in 2022-23 some 15 000 to 23 000 doctors had left the NHS workforce, that replacing them would cost £1.6bn to £2.4bn, and that ever more doctors were taking steps to leave. It called for urgent action on retention through a…
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