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The NHS’s staffing crisis has been exposed by a study that shows many doctors, nurses and other staff in specialist training never join the full-time workforce or leave after just a few years in their careers.
One solution, suggested by health think tank the Nuffield Trust, would be to completely cancel student debt for those who agree to stay on the NHS for 10 years.
The company said its analysis, based on 190,000 student records, represented “the most comprehensive understanding of attrition rates yet” in health services.
The research, published on Thursday, shows that only half of UK-trained GPs who go on to train as trainees go on to a full-time career in general practice.
The number of doctors taking a break after completing their first two years of hospital training doubled to 70% between 2011 and 2021, and around one in six doctors who completed a foundation course in 2021-22 are unlikely to return to complete their training .
Overall, fewer than three-fifths of doctors who received “core training” – the start of specialization – were still working in NHS hospitals and community services in England after eight years, half of them in the first year, the thinktank said. Two years. explain.
A similar picture is seen in nursing, with one in eight students quitting during training and around one in five nurses leaving NHS hospitals and community settings within two years of joining. Meanwhile, one in nine midwives does not join their profession after graduation.
To tackle the brain drain, the trust is calling for the 28,000 nurses, midwives and allied health professionals (AHPs) who join the public service each year to be qualified, such as physiotherapists or radiographers, before being deregistered after 10 years if they remain in school its outstanding student debt. National Health Service. For example, the current debt of a nurse averages around £48,000.
It is estimated that nursing, midwifery and AHP graduates will cost around £230 million per year, and this can be extended to doctors at around £170 million per year.
Billy Palmer, a senior research fellow at the Nuffield Trust, told the Financial Times that there is no single reason why clinical trainees fail to complete their studies. He said “lack of resettlement support, pressure, regulatory issues, lack of flexibility and financial reasons” were all reasons. “Unfortunately, this will impact some groups more than others, including those with parental or caring responsibilities and older students,” he added.
The Financial Times reported last week that data from the university application service UCAS showed that nursing admissions in the UK had dropped by 12% compared with 2022. To meet the 2031 targets in the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan published earlier this year, nursing training places will need to increase by 65% to 80% compared to last year’s levels.
Dean Rogers, director of industry strategy at the British Association of Radiographers, said starting salaries for NHS graduates were below £30,000, which was unusual among public sector workers. “Even after graduating and working as radiologic technologists for several years, our members still express the inability to move out of their parents’ homes,” he added.
The government said data from the Office for Students, the higher education watchdog, showed nursing, allied health and psychology courses “achieve similar standards and in some areas even better than other subjects”.
The report adds that the current student finance system “strikes the right balance between the interests of students and taxpayers”. The company said it was “working closely with NHS England to reduce student attrition rates” and ensure they were supported during their training.
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