Catherwood LibraryILR School

Great Britain’s National Health Service is facing a crisis as the number of new jobs created far outgrows the number of new medical specialists coming into the workforce. Although matching staff supply to the needs of the public has always been a problem, the past four years have seen vacancy rates increasing, resulting in almost 40,000 jobs going unfilled. The most important factor underlying this issue is the lack of retention in the workforce, as more people leave NHS jobs every year than are training and joining them. To solve this problem, the UK set up Health Education England to help with planning in the workplace, but many believe the agency does not act with enough urgency and does not understand the needs of the hospitals and clinics it manages. In the past, the UK has relied on nurses from the EU to fill vacancies. Post-Brexit, however, there has been a near total collapse of EU nurses registering to work with the NHS, which has exacerbated the problem and left the government with little choice but to consider new employment practices to retain and motivate workers.