The British NHS health service in England alone is missing around 12,000 hospital doctors and over 50,000 nurses and midwives. This is his biggest personnel crisis to date. The waiting list for hospital treatment is longer than ever in April.
According to the Health Committee in the London House of Commons, the British state health service NHS is experiencing the biggest personnel crisis in its history. “Persistent understaffing poses a serious risk to the safety of staff and patients – in both routine and emergency care,” the committee said in a report.
In England alone, the National Health Service (NHS) is short of 12,000 hospital doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives, write MPs, citing figures from the Nuffield Trust. Waiting lists for hospital treatment rose to a record high of nearly 6.5 million patients in April this year. The goal of offering treatment within 18 weeks has not been met since 2016. An overwhelming majority of medical professionals believe that the current workforce will not be able to reduce the backlog caused by the pandemic.
At the same time, the demand for services in the health and care sector continues to rise. In the next few decades, 475,000 additional jobs will be needed in the health sector and 490,000 in nursing, it is said. The government has refused to act decisively. Some progress has been made in hiring additional nurses. However, former health minister Sajid Javid himself admitted that the goal of hiring 6,000 additional family doctors would not be achieved as promised in the conservative election program. In a recent statement, the British Ministry of Health referred to new recruitments in the past year and assured that more staff would be hired.