Our workforce plan will aim to address the multiple workforce challenges we face, and to attract, develop, and retain a more stable workforce in both community and hospital settings. The purpose is to improve standards of wellbeing for our staff, and patients alike, and to reduce unnecessary costs.
For example, a more integrated health and care system as descried in the PBC will provide better training and experience of working across professional and organisation boundaries and in different settings.
Also, replacing the acute services run over two sites with a single acute service in the new urgent and planned care hospital will enable us to reduce duplication and deliver economies of scale in a single location. This is likely to be more attractive for the recruitment and retention of staff for several reasons.
The new urgent and planned care hospital will form part of the solution to safe and sustainable rotas and provide us with the ability to attract doctors, as the rotas will be less demanding on individuals. Another benefit of aligning some of our specialist staff, is allowing them the opportunity to see sufficient patients to maintain and build their expertise in certain areas and to work in networks. Currently it is not always possible for our patients to have a specialist appointment when they need one – and this needs to change.