Health Professions

(asked on 30th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many full-time equivalent (a) doctors and (b) nurses there were in each quarter from Q1 2020-21 to the latest available data.


Answered by
Helen Whately Portrait
Helen Whately
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 8th December 2020

NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) workforce statistics. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), but not staff working in primary care, general practice surgeries, local authorities or other providers.

As at the end of quarter one 2020/21 there were 121,142 full time equivalent HCHS doctors working in the National Health Service. There were also 324,599 full-time equivalent (FTE) registered nurses, health visitors and midwives, of which 295,818 FTE were nurses, 6,652 FTE were health visitors and 22,128 were midwives. Data for the end of quarter two 2020/21, September 2020, will be published on 22 December.

NHS England and NHS Improvement collect vacancy data for three staff groups; doctors, registered nurses (nurses, health visitors and midwives) and ‘other staff’. These vacancy statistics are published by NHS Digital for England and at regional level.

The following table shows the number of FTE vacancies and vacancy rates for doctors and registered nurses, health visitors and midwives in each quarter of 2020-21 to the latest available data. The quarterly vacancy figures provided are based on the number of vacancies at the end of the respective quarter.

Nurses, health visitors and midwives

Medical

FTE vacancies

Vacancy rate

FTE vacancies

Vacancy rate

Q1 2020/21 June 2020

37,185

10.1%

7,924

5.9%

Q2 2020/21 September 2020

36,655

10.0%

7,502

5.5%

Source: NHS England and NHS Improvement – NHS vacancy statistics April 2015-September 2020 England Tables – published by NHS Digital

The vacancy figures and workforce statistics do not perfectly align as they are derived from different sources. Vacancy figures are derived from a bespoke data collection from trusts, relating to the number of established posts they have and how many are not filled by substantive staff. Staff in post figures on the number of doctors and nurses working in the National Health Service are derived from the Electronic Staff Record, the Human Resources and payroll system for the NHS.

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