NHS staffing shortages: why do politicians struggle to give the NHS the staff it needs?

The King's Fund -
The King’s Fund and Engage Britain commissioned Bill Morgan, a former Conservative special adviser, to explore what can get in the way of ministers taking meaningful, long-term action to address NHS workforce shortages. The resulting report focuses on the role of politicians in workforce planning and delivery. It sets out the scale of the workforce crisis and the impact that it has, and the causes – identified in the report as difficulties in workforce forecasting, a tendency to train too few staff in the UK, and the insufficiently strategic use of international migration to compensate. It also considers the political reasons around why it has historically been so hard to fix and considers three factors that could contribute to tackling the current shortages.

• Report
• The King's Fund - publications