NHS Workforce Plan aims to deliver 300,000 more staff by 2037

The NHS published its long-awaited Long Term Workforce Plan on Friday, which is backed by a £2.4bn to "fund additional education and training places over five years on top of existing funding commitments".

If successful, the plan will deliver 300,000 more health personnel in England by 2037. It envisages that by the end of its 14-year timeline the overall NHS workforce will have grown dramatically from 1.4m now to between 2.2m and 2.3m.

Alongside the plan, officials have asked the doctors’ regulator, the General Medical Council (GMC), and medical schools to consult on the introduction of four-year medical degrees (currently 5 years) and medical internships, allowing students to start work six months earlier.

However, Prof David Strain, the chair of the BMA’s medical academic staff committee, told the Guardian:

“We would be very concerned that trying to squeeze a five-year undergraduate degree into four years would compromise education and training standards in an already heavily demanding course.

“There would also be concerns as to what could be omitted from an already crammed course. A broad understanding of the diagnostics and interventions is clearly essential, therefore we would be concerned that the ‘softer skills’, such as communication skills, research and education, could be disadvantaged."

In a letter to NHS colleagues which accompanied the plan's release on Friday, NHS Chief Executive Amanda Pritchard and Chief Workforce Officer Navina Evans said:

"The certainty of confirmed funding up to 2028 allows us to take the actions locally, regionally, and nationally to address the gaps we have in the current workforce and meet the challenge of a growing and ageing population.

"In the coming weeks and months, we will work with you and your teams to co-design the delivery of system-level NHS Long Term Workforce Plan actions."

Updates are planned every two years.