While staffing is a year-round problem for the overwhelming majority of the health and care sector, November is definitely all about workforce for Nursing Times. It’s the month when we hold our annual Workforce Summit & Awards, both physically and virtually, and also when we publish a themed issue of Nursing Times to coincide with these events.
This year was the fifth Nursing Times Workforce Summit & Awards that we’ve hosted, which is a personal milestone for me, as I helped launch the event back in 2018. However, sadly, if anything the workforce situation is even more challenging than in previous years, and, as I’ve stated before, it feels like we have reached a crisis point.
Nurse vacancy rates are on the rise, staff who worked through a pandemic are now having to deal with the fallout in terms of waiting lists and delayed diagnoses, not forgetting the impact on their own health through burnout and long Covid. In addition, winter is coming fast around the corner and influenza rates are on the rise.
“This year’s summit, despite the huge challenges mentioned, felt like a very positive experience”
Meanwhile, the cost of living is also having an inevitable impact and years of below-inflation pay awards have led union members to the ballot box, with dates now set for industrial action over the coming months.
But while our Workforce Summit is very much about shining a light on these problems in nursing and midwifery, it is also about trying to find ways to alleviate some of them and to share the great work being done around the country by nurse leaders, be it on recruitment, retention, staff wellbeing or supporting new staff to find their feet and establish themselves as valued members of their teams. All of these are vital to solving the workforce challenge or at least some of it.
This year’s summit, despite the huge challenges mentioned, felt like a very positive experience, with some really strong discussions among delegates on what they were doing, could be doing and wanted to do on the workforce and staffing issues within their control and influence – I think we have to leave pay to unions and the UK governments.
Likewise, in the evening it was a great pleasure to host, once again, the 2022 Nursing Times Workforce Awards, our annual celebration of all things related to nurse staffing. The aim of the awards is to highlight nursing’s workforce achievements and some of the brilliant work being carried out during what continues to be an incredibly difficult period. As far as I am aware, they are unique in their focus on both workforce and on the nursing and midwifery professions.
Therefore, I want to congratulate all our finalists and winners for 2022 across 17 categories, including Nurse Manager of the Year, Workforce Team of the Year and the big one, Best UK Employer of the Year for Nursing Staff. They show that people can and are making a difference.
Once again, the awards highlighted organisations that go the extra mile when trying to attract new nursing staff, via our categories for Best Recruitment Experience and Best International Recruitment Experience. Just as importantly, we celebrated efforts to retain staff, with awards for Best Staff Wellbeing Initiative and Best Employer for Staff Recognition and Engagement.
Sticking with the vital topic of workforce retention, disturbingly, two thirds of nurses who left the NHS in England in the past year were under the age of 45. One of the key factors to halting this trend is surely, I feel, better preceptorship. As you may know, with our friends at Unison and the Florence Nightingale Foundation, we have been campaigning this year for consistent access to good-quality preceptorship and this is also something that I want to further promote through our awards for Preceptor of the Year and Preceptorship Programme of the Year.
“What is needed too, of course, is support from ministers in charge of the purse strings”
Another incredibly significant area that continues to require focus and improvement is equality, diversity and inclusion, which we recognised with our awards for Best Diversity and Inclusion Practice and Diversity and Inclusion Champion of the Year.
I know I’ve put a slightly more positive spin than usual on a dire, dire situation, but I think there must always be hope, especially given the positive energy and ideas that I saw in the conference room on Tuesday and later at the awards ceremony.
What is needed too, of course, is support from ministers in charge of the purse strings. That is never guaranteed, especially with the present economic situation, but the chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s pledge to publish “independently verified” forecasts of how many nurses and other staff the NHS needs, as part of a long-term workforce plan, is most welcome.
This was something the former health and care secretary called for when chair of the Commons’ Health Select Committee and it is very good to see him follow through with it, now that he is back in the cabinet; never something one can guarantee in politics. Pay is another thorny question though.
I really hope, though don’t necessarily expect, to be able to be talking about few workforce challenges by the time we reach November 2023. We shall see.
You can read news coverage and watch video presentations from the Workforce Summit by visiting the Nursing Times website, as well as finding out who won what at the Workforce Awards.
