New Research To Tackle Challenges Facing NHS And Care Workforce

£24m will be invested in 5 innovative new research partnerships designed to tackle major challenges facing NHS and social care staff.

Workforce sustainability is a critical area for UK health and social care services, with 106,432 unfilled posts in secondary care (hospital-based and mental health care), and 131,000 unfilled posts in the social care sector.

Now NIHR is investing £24m into 5 Workforce Research Partnerships (WRPs). These will develop and test innovations to improve the quality of health and social care services – improving staff retention and tackling issues such as workplace stress and high staff turnover.

The partnerships involve 24 universities across England and Wales, 5 NHS Trusts, 4 councils, and 5 charities and non-profit organisations. They are working across a wide range of integrated care system regions.

Professor Lucy Chappell, NIHR Chief Executive, and Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Health and Social Care, said:
“Staff are the backbone of our health and care system. The NIHR is stepping up to fund high-quality research to understand our workforce needs better. These new landmark research partnerships will generate crucial new research across a range of projects to help improve the quality, organisation and retention of teams, which will in turn improve the quality of care they provide.”

Karin Smyth, Minister of State for Health said:
“As we work to rebuild our broken NHS, it is essential we better understand the skills, expertise and aspirations of our amazing health and care workforce.

“That means making the most of their talents and deploying them where they can be most effective. It also means ensuring the work is enjoyable, meaningful and their wellbeing prioritised in what is, so often, a high-pressured environment.

“The valuable research generated by these partnerships will help us retain and nurture more staff, turn the tide on recruitment challenges, and deliver even more high-quality health and care to communities throughout England.”

Each WRP is made up of a multidisciplinary team. The teams draw expertise from a range of backgrounds. These include human resources, labour economics, work and wellbeing, management science and organisational psychology.

Teams will conduct high quality research into key questions on how best to deploy and support staff across health and social care. The research will explore new ways to keep NHS and social care workforces healthy. This will enable them to stay in and return to work themselves, in turn benefiting the people they care for.

Better workforce planning and organisation will lead to a more stable, healthy workforce, and improve care for patients and service users. It will save money for the NHS and the social care sector by reducing recruitment and agency staff costs and better meet future patient needs.

The research will focus on a range of staff roles. This includes GPs, health and social care workers and allied health professionals (AHPs). Plus, staff that aren’t often the focus of research. This includes non-clinical and support staff, disabled staff, and staff from ethnic minority groups.

There will also be a focus on staff working in coastal and rural areas. Plus, services provided in geographical areas of disadvantage and deprivation.