NHS workforce strategy predicts health professional surplus
By 2010 there will be more health professionals than the NHS can afford to employ, according to a draft of the NHS pay and workforce strategy for 2008-11 that was reported in the Health
Service Journal last week.
The document predicts that by 2010–11 there will be in excess of
16,200 allied health professionals, health care scientists and technicians.
However, it is unclear how many of these, if any, are pharmacists.
Anthony Oxley, president of the Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists, commented: “The
Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s analysis has shown that there is
likely to be a shortage of pharmacists in the future rather than a surplus.
We cannot draw any conclusions from the broad approach used in the Department
of Health draft document, where pharmacists are grouped together with
so many other professions, but would need to see more detail of the breakdown
of these figures.”
David Miller, chairman of the guild’s terms and conditions committee,
added: “Workforce predictions are notoriously inaccurate and DoH
data normally only deal with numbers in the managed sector rather than
the commercial sector where most of the profession practise. The increasing
numbers of pharmacists employed by the managed sector over the past 10
years show members’ versatility and the value they add to the safe,
effective and economic management of medicines.” |
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Pharmaceutical Journal
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