Growing the nursing and health workforce across the UK: an uphill battle or a self-made struggle?

The current shortages of nurses and many allied health professions across the UK is not a new phenomenon. Yet the scale of the current challenges within the workforce will require new paradigms of thinking in relation to three key areas: · recruitment of individuals into entry routes for professional regulated much needed careers\ud · new paradigms of delivery that equip the trainees with new skills required to deliver health care of the future · career pathways post qualification that support newly qualified nurses and allied health professionals flourishing and continue to be part of the much-needed workforce. However, the challenges are great. A government target of 50,000 more nurses (largely being met by international recruitment) is just the tip of the iceberg. Healthcare professionals leaving the NHS due for a range of real problems further compounds the problem and a further crisis of a lack of an academic workforce to educate the workforce simply adds to a scenario of challenge. Professor Webster-Henderson will explore all these issues, and will answer the questions which are often raised when the public and even other health care professions ask; - does nursing really need to be a degree profession? - Have universities and the graduate approach to training nurses and allied health professionals intensified the challenges? - How will we grow a workforce for the future? - Is it going to be an uphill battle or have we really just created a self -made problem and now cant find a way forward? The lecture will explore all these issue, look to possible solutions as well as offering some system wide considerations. What is clear, is that the evidence to date on the numbers of professionals required for the growing demands of continued health care in the UK require a radical solution. More of the same won't work, more of the same will be an uphill battle and a self-made struggle